What I don't do is cross 6 km of open water between islands, especially alone, because here at Vancouver Island the sea has strong currents and the weather can change from good to bad in an hour. In inflatable kayaks, I routinely paddle 4 km along the shore of my local bay and back, and 8 km or longer along other shorelines. These are very good kayaks for paddling in sheltered water such as lakes and bays. I'm currently writing some product reviews of Advanced Elements kayaks, and I like them a lot. So you're from Malta? That is such an interesting place to read about. I'm Paula, the one on the Kayakyak blog who uses inflatable kayaks as well as a rotomolded plastic Eliza kayak from Necky. Size-wise, at least, this is a strong probability. When Paula travels to Mississauga next all, she hopes to take it with her on the GO train to Union Station and then to paddle out from there into the Toronto Islands. A blunter and firmer bow shape would probably have been more to the point.īut the Skedaddle/Dragonfly does pack up very small and weighs only 20 lbs.-making it possible to haul on the back of a bike or on public transit. AE has put a small skeg on the rear and attached a shallow plastic keel to the front (a keel about 30 centimetres long) to help with tracking, but the boat still tends to skitter about with each stroke. Paula resorted to tiny strokes twice as often to reduce this side to side twisting. This means it spins on a dime and gives nine cents change, but it also means that there is no resistance to lateral motion while paddling. This kayak lacks the aluminium reinforcements front and rear, and the front end is both pointed and sweeps forward up and out of the water quite a bit. Advanced calls it the Dragonfly-a much nicer name. West marine call this the Skedaddle 1 (crappy name in my opinion). Purchased (on sale) from West Marine, it's an Advanced Elements kayak re-branded as a West Marine one. Someone who has really been impressed by his kayak is Paula. Dennis, I know, has a few things to say about the cockpit and a few other points, but I'll let him talk about those himself. The shape is very much that of a traditional kayak, and the shape and structure of the tubes make it quite a nice kayak overall. The bow and stern are reinforced and shaped with small aluminium inserts and it comes with a small skeg. The day we first inflated it-we paddled Elk Lake during the only sunny break that day offered-we knew that this was something a fair bit of thought had gone into. Although, that being said, on our first paddle together, he and I did make it over to the Chatham Islands.a feeling that we've been hard-pressed to duplicate since.īut once Dennis traded up to his Advanced Elements kayak, we've all been much more impressed with the possibilities of inflatables. His first, while not the worst boat in the world, was far too much like the cheap inflatable boats that kids muck about in at the lake in the summer to be much good in the ocean. Dennis has always paddled an inflatable kayak.

Skedaddle inflatable kayak