When we had a house we owned several Perception kayaks. We would toss them in the back of Mrs Ram’s truck and go kayaking whenever we wanted.
With the house gone, having our own kayaks seemed too much for our minimalist lifestyle. Renting kayaks from time to time seemed like a good plan.
And we did just that in Prescott AZ and Boyd Lake in Colorado. In the Okefenokee Swamp we paddled up close to a number of alligators. At the Land Between the Lakes we had found a place to rent a tandem however our neighbors let us use their kayaks. Some places like Glacier had rentals but all of the kayaks were rented or they were available when the weather was less than ideal. And other places just had no place to rent a kayak.
We enjoyed kayaking and missed having our own kayaks especially at those places where there was a great place to kayak but no place to rent them.
The solution? An inflatable kayak! We thought we could find room for it under our bed when it was deflated. We rented a Tributary Tomcat tandem inflatable in Pagosa Springs that was fully inflated when we picked it up.
Ok so we should have deflated it before putting it in Sparty. Deflated we were certain it would fit under our bed. When we got it out on the water we understood why they had described the tandem inflatable as a “divorce boat.” We could not get it to go in a straight line no matter how much we tried. Some said having rubber or solid fins (called skegs) on the bottom might help. We doubted that.
We did try a solid-sided tandem in Prescott and found it much easier to maneuver. And we had fewer arguments about direction and paddle strokes. Maybe its nickname would be “trial separation boat.”
Would inflatable single kayaks be a better choice? We picked up two Intex Challengers on sale at a Big 5 in Durango. We opened up one of them and took it out to try. Its was not too difficult to inflate and Mrs Ram found it passable to get out on the water. It was not great in the wind. Mr Ram found it was just too small – his legs just did not fit inside it.
Trying to get all of the air out so it would fit back in the box was challenging. Trying to get it dry enough so that it did not smell after a few weeks of storage seemed impossible.
We talked to kayakers that had an inflatable and they said they normally dry in the sun for several hours. Despite that, their kayak still had that slightly moldy smell. For us, we would wipe our inflatable down well. However we would only sun-dry it for a few minutes at most before stuffing it back into its box. We suspected that we would quickly have a very smelly kayak and storage box. And it would be located right under our bed.
THOUGHTS ON CHOICES
Inflatable
- We could deflate it and possibly get it into a storage box under our bed.
- Time to inflate, deflate
- Poor tracking
- Too small
- Worrying about snagging things underwater
- Not being able to dry off well before storing
- Smelly, moldy storage
Tandem
- We already spend lots of time together.
- Its big and heavy
- Nickname “divorce boat” for an inflatable tandem is apt
- No money in the budget for divorce lawyers
Hard Sided Singles
- Its what we used to have
- Having your own space
- No fighting about paddling
- Not too expensive at Walmart
- Where do we put them??
DECISION
We decided on hard sided single kayaks. We liked some of the options from REI and other outdoor stores but the cost for a single kayak was more than double the cost of two, ten-foot kayaks from Walmart. In the end we opted for a couple of Lifetime Kayaks delivered to a nearby Walmart.