The latest issue of Sea Kayaker has an ad from Necky for their Looksha 14 with a graphic showing a track exiting La Push and around a few of the outlying rocks and islets. Two years ago I spent some time talking to the Necky rep at the Pt. Townsend seminar wondering why so few sea kayak manufacturers had tried to lure the w/w (or ex-w/w) crowd into rock gardening and surfing with a boat especially made for it. The Coaster and, more recently, the Rockhopper are among the very few. It seemed to me then that, absent Mariner, the playboats for sea kayakers were mostly skegged British boats. When I saw the ad for the Looksha 14 I was immediately struck by the thought that at least someone is marketing a boat as a sea kayaker's playboat that would appeal to the w/w crowd looking for new adrenaline highs. Mark Sanders and I tried to find a Looksha 14 at a few stores in So. Cal. to no avail. My trip back north took me along the Big Sur coastline of California in hopes of getting out to play in the rock gardens there. Unfortunately, I picked the week with 30kt NW'lies and even the elephant seals were staying ashore. Monterrey, my last hope, was also windy but the kayak store there, Monterrey Bay Kayaks, had a Looksha 14 that one of the staff was kind enough to show me (after I enquired about jet ski rentals - seemed like a fun thing to do at the time) their model on display. However, it was being displayed with fishing gear as a kayak fishing boat rather than as a sea kayaker's playboat The Looksha 14 appears to have a hull very similar to the Coaster (in plastic for about $1300) and looked to me to be suitable to at least try to play in rocks with. She offered to let me demo the boat but I was more interested in finding sea otters on Elkhorn Slough and not at all interested in being blown around the Bay. As it turned out, there were a few otters munching tidbits on the other side of the bridge from Moss Landing and I had a nice visit, surfed a few of the swells making their way into the marina, and drove off to visit friends in San Fran. So for anyone who lives close to MBK (or anyone else), if you get a chance to demo the Looksha 14 I'd be interested in what you think. Craig Jungers almost back home in Moses Lake, WA *************************************************************************** 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/ ***************************************************************************
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0 : Thu Aug 21 2025 - 16:33:49 PDT