[Paddlewise] Brittle!

I put up a post on the http://victoriakayaker.blogspot.com/ and intended to
let all the good folks here at Paddlewise know what became of my query two
years ago regarding toggles.  But that ever inquisitive Doug Lloyd beat me to
the line.

I've just completed wading through over 400 Paddlewise post that have
accumulated in my inbox over the past year. Another 600 or so where lost when
there was a computer update.

I've been absent from the community for some time, but have enjoyed the last
couple of hours catching up with everyone's adventures and misadventures.
Mark Sanders has proudly mastered his roll while burning through a few million
gigabits of digital recordings.  Everyone should send him a couple of bucks so
he can buy that super slick camera and post even more clips to keep the
community entertained.

Thanks to Paddlewise the name Tiderace must have just about penetrated the
minds of 90% of the world wide kayaking community.  What would that type of
marketing penetration cost?  Too bad so few shops are stocking the brand.

Doug was the second local kayaker, the other is also highly regarded, to use
the term brittle to describe NDK kayaks.  I first heard the term while
paddling the Tiderace kayaks at Trial Island.  Can someone explain this to me?
In three years of bashing an HV Explorer around I have yet to have a hunk
break off like peanut brittle.

I've a good friend, two actually, who own P&H kayaks.  It's tough having only
two friends but I've gotten use to it.  Both of their boats are covered with
spider web cracks in the gelcoat.  Of course my boat has the unique Canadian
flag gelcoat repair on the aft deck.  That happened as a result of surfing up
a dumping beach, jumping out, quickly pulling the boat up and rushing off to
help a guy who'd just broke his leg. A subsequent wave swept my kayak back out
and maytagged it in a boulder field down the beach.  I paddled the boat home
and discovered the damage unloading in my driveway.  In my estimation some
kayaks would have been written off in the same circumstances.

I also put three spider cracks in the hull while doing a seal landing in a
storm surge out in Juan de Fuca after an embarrassingly stupid moment when I
displayed an astonishing lack of judgment.

But I've yet to see brittle chunks fly from the kayak.

There's one thing that I don't like about my NDK, the coaming that sucks water
under the spray deck because, too make it pretty, the lip is two inches wide,
(grrrr!)

So my question is what's Brittle mean?
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