Just a few new products I've seen and heard about: Thule has recently released a J-style cradle for kayaks. It consists of a single length of coated steel tubing bent into a U shape (like the kayak stackers) and then bent so that it forms a J. That is, on the rack it looks like a J from the front or back and an upside-down U, about five inches wide, from the side. There are pads between the two sides of the U to support the kayak and a rigid plastic mount to connect to the rack crossbars. You need two per kayak, one each for the front and rear crossbars. There are no special strap connection points, you just wrap the strap around the bar like you do for the stacker. It seems quite sturdy. Don't know the price or model number. Lendal is releasing (or has recently released) a new carbon fibre blade for their paddles. Rather than use fibre reinforced nylon as in their current carbon blades (like Aquabound or Phantom GX), this is a vacuum-bagged, carbon fibre laminate like you see on Lightning or Current Design style blades. This results in a lighter, albeit more brittle-edged blade. I've seen the Nordkapp model and it's light. NDK is redesigning a version of the Romany Explorer for women. They realize that the North American market has more women participating in kayaking than the British market, so they want to meet those demands. Rather than suggest that women paddle a Romany 16, they are making changes to the cockpit of the Explorer to better fit women's body sizes (i.e relatively wider hips and shorter torso than most men). This bit of info I would classify as a good rumor (I've seen the Thule and Lendal products but was told the NDK news by the Canadian importer for NDK). I just thought some of you would like to know. Mike *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Mon Sep 17 2001 - 14:55:05 PDT
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