Re: [Paddlewise] Safety in Recreational Kayaks

At 03:56 PM 4/18/02 -0400, kork4_at_email.com wrote:
>On 18 Apr 2002 at 14:09, ScanSport wrote:
>
> > I am only trying to find a way to make recreational boats safer for
> > the "uninformed". But you are touching on my main problem here: How do we
> > define what is a recreational kayak vs non-recreational?
>
>I think it could be a good marketting ploy by one of the recreational 
>kayak vendors.
>
>The boat is "safer" because it has extra flotation.

"could be"?  There is already one well know and respected Canoe and Kayak 
manufacturer that builds their recreational kayaks using a material with a 
foam core that they claim provides "more floation".  They don't come right 
out and claim that the the extra floatation is safer though.

However, in most cases people don't buy kayaks directly from the vendor, 
but through a store or shop which sells kayaks from one or more 
vendors.  That salesman might easily imply that the extra floatation makes 
that particular kayak safer and the consumer might then choose that model, 
not based on the vendors claims, but how the salesman interpreted 
them.  The salesman is not likely going to explain that while the $500 
recreational kayak made of a material that has extra floation might float a 
couple of inches higher than a $400 recreational kayak with a standard 
polyethylene layup when it's full of water (because neither has float bags 
to displace water), neither one of them can actually be paddled at that 
point.  The only real advantage of a kayak that floats higher in the water 
when it's full of water is that it would be easier to recover in a search 
and rescue effort.


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