Lightweight Kayaks ROCK! | Hurricane Tampico 130 Review

Ken Whiting with PaddleTV with another unbiased in-depth gear review and in this video I'm reviewing a kayak that helped break down one of the barriers to kayaking and there aren't that many barriers to getting into kayaking. There's well the fear of water being one but the bigger one is the the kayaks themselves. A full-size kayak 10 to 17 feet long can be a to move around. You add on top of that the weight of some kayaks and that's a it could be a real issue and it can literally stop people from getting into kayaking. Fortunately there are kayaks on the market that are lighter and that's what we're going to look at today. This is the Hurricane Tampico 130. The Hurricane Tampico 130 has a retail price of 1600 US dollars. It's 13 feet 2 inches long. It's 26 inches wide. It weighs 45 pounds or 20 kilos and it has a max capacity of 300 pounds or 136 kilos. Its primary use is for touring. The Tampico features a multi chine hull to blend speed, tracking and stability. A new h-pod storage hatch, bungees on the back and front, their new Airstream strong side padded seat, an adjustable back support, bulkheads in the front and back and hatches on the front and back. Now I'm six foot two, 200 pounds and I've been active my whole life. I've been paddling my whole life but I still really really appreciate a 45 pound kayak. It's nice to move around a 13 foot boat that's this light but I'm not even willing to move around a five pound kayak if it's no fun to paddle and so that's what we have to figure out. Is this thing worth it? And to do that, well I actually already tested this kayak. I went down to the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge and did a three day kayak camping trip in this sucker here. It was an incredible opportunity to really test this kayak out and so here's a few shots of me putting this thing to the test and then I'm going to tell you all about this kayak. Yes, that was one of the coolest places I've paddled in the world. I'll be honest the Okefenokee swamp wasn't on my bucket list before I headed there but it really should have been. It is a spectacular place and definitely something you should put on your bucket list but it really was a great opportunity to test this kayak on a multi-day trip. I love multi-day trips and this well I'll talk about that in a bit. Let's start like I always do by talking about the boat's portability. It's 45 pounds. I mean that's not feather light but for a 13 foot kayak, you know let's even back up a bit further and explain there's really three ways kayaks are made. You've got rotomolded kayaks which is basically the plastic is dumped into a mold, it's heated up in an oven, rotated around so the plastic coats the sides and then when that's done, oh my gosh there are a lot of bugs here, when it's done cooking the mold pops open and et voila you've got a kayak. Rotomolded kayaks, they tend to be very durable. They're very cost effective to produce so they're cheaper but they're also heavier and so a rotomolded kayak of this size is probably going to be 25%, 30% heavier than this kayak. This is made by thermoforming and what they do with thermoforming is there's two sides of the kayak that are made separately and then they're put together and welded together and so you have a bottom half, top half welded together. This allows them to create a stiffer and lighter kayak. It's not quite as durable and it's not quite as cheap as rotomolding. The other main technique to have making kayaks is with composites like Kevlar and carbon fiberglass and those make beautiful stiff kayaks that are very light and perform great. They're very fast through the water but you pay a premium for them. They're most expensive types of kayaks. This is a thermoformed kayak and so you trade off a little durability. Even though it's quite durable, you have to be more careful with this than you would be with a rotomolded kayak. Portability, easy to move around. Because of how it was built, you do have to be a little bit more careful when you're tying it down on your vehicle. This isn't the kind of kayak you just reef as hard as you can down on the cam straps to button it down. I mean you can tie it down pretty tight hard. You don't have to baby this thing but you have to be a little bit more aware when you're tying it down. Now let's talk about its comfort. Was it a comfortable kayak? Well yes. I did a three-day trip. We were on the water on average seven to eight hours a day and so it really did test the comfort of this thing and it passed. It definitely passed the comfort test. That's great for me being a bigger guy. 34 inch inseam, size 10 feet, 200 pounds. You know I can be tight in some kayaks. That kind of time spent in the kayak can be uncomfortable but this one I really wasn't uncomfortable. I mean I was no more uncomfortable than you'd expect to be from sitting down for seven or eight hours at a time. The seat is nice and padded. It's got a thicker part on the front of the seat which helps a little bit lift your legs up. The back support is adjustable. I can go up and down. I just keep it in the down position because that's what I'm used to. I'm used to having a low back support and I like it that way but for people who like high back support this this would be really nice as well. It's a padded back support. It's a comfortable kayak. Absolutely. Let's talk stability. This is a 26 inch wide kayak and right out of the gate you know that it's not going to be the most stable kayak because it's only 26 inches wide. It's not the narrowest kayak but it's kind of a what I like to call a recreational touring kayak or a light touring. Actually it's more than a recreational touring kayak. This is more of a light touring kayak where you're trading some stability for efficiency of travel through the water and that's exactly what it does. It's not the most stable kayak but it is a stable kayak. You could put anybody in this thing and they'd feel pretty darn good. Now the hull has got a v-hull to it and so what that means it's really designed for travel forward but it also means when you put it on edge it kind of locks into place. So it's got good primary stability but it's got really nice secondary stability when you put it on edge whether it's trying to turn the boat sweeping or if you're paddling in rougher conditions. Very nice secondary stability on this thing. So the performance of this thing really comes from the hull and the hull of this kayak it's a v-hull it's got uh this v-shape a keel right down the middle of the kayak and that helps it track keep on on a straight course through the water and it does that it does that great it helps it travel efficiently forward and it travels very efficiently very well forward for a 13-foot kayak. It's not a long kayak it's not the fastest kayak because it is only 13 feet but for a 13-foot kayak it travels very very well through the water. It's a fun boat to paddle. I think that's the best way to put it this is a fun boat to paddle because every stroke you take you're you feel like boom i'm actually moving with this stroke it's i'm not fighting the water i'm actually cruising through the water. It travels well in the water but it's also at 13 feet it turns very well especially because of the secondary stability when you put it on edge and then you start sweeping to turn the boat it likes to turn it turns very well better than when it's held flat then it likes to go straight but at 13 feet you don't have to put this boat on edge for it to turn very well you know it really does provide a great combination of stability maneuverability and forward speed so good performance good stability. Let's talk about some of its features and it doesn't have that many features really to talk about probably the ones to talk about are the hatches two hatches a hat well actually three hatches but two main hatches and one up front and one in behind and it has two bulkheads which are walls that separate the compartments of this of this boat there's one right behind the seat and there's another one right in front of your feet that's great great for a variety of reasons great for multi-day trips because you have basically they're not waterproof compartments but they're separated compartments watertight compartments in the back and in the front and then you have your cockpits if you ever did swim the cockpit is going to swamp not the whole kayak much easier to deal with a kayak that's only got this much area that's swamped not the whole thing now for multi-day trips that also protects the gear you have from just being completely soaked you still want to put everything you put into this kayak in dry bags that's uh you just always want to anytime you have gear of any nature in a kayak just dry bag it even if it looks like a hatch is super dry it's not it never is so anyway that's a great feature a safety feature because of the bulkheads but also for multi-day trip it's a great feature the hatch back here is in the stern in particular is nice and big and there's lots of room back here tons of room for gear a very good multi-day trip boat also a big factor is there's no skeg or rudder on this boat and when you have a kayak has a skeg that skeg comes up into the stern of the kayak and it into a skeg box it basically takes up space in the back of the kayak this doesn't have that tons of room for gear the new feature they have here is this day hatch right in front for hey look at that for my trip a couple of granola bars some nuts i mean that's what it's for right there this is waterproof it's got a gasket on it so it should be quite waterproof now i love having a little easy access hatch right there and you can see i was using it but you know the one downside for this thing was i actually threw my phone in this thing because it looks like a great phone side it pretty much was exact same size as this went with the case on it and i couldn't get it out it was a perfect size and so i you know that's a little one of those ah which was just a little bit bigger there's plenty of room there for it to be bigger if it was a little bit bigger a big phone could fit in there and not be an effort to get out but you know what that's being picky but that is what i'm here to do is is test these things and find out find the big things that could be improved small things that could be improved you know like that and uh and really more than anything identify who is this kayak for not so much is this a good kayak or bad kayak that's always a question i'm i can tell you right now this is a great kayak is the right kayak for you well that's a different question altogether and that's what we're going to talk about right now who is this kayak for well this you know being a light touring a day to day touring kayak it's a it's a touring kayak this is a touring kayak and the reason it's a touring kayak i i classify it as a touring kayak is because it has a cockpit a small cockpit here that's designed to take a skirt and right away that combined with the fact that it has two bulk heads means that this thing can be is safe to take into rough conditions doesn't mean you should but it's more your limitations as a paddler rather than the boat's limitations that will allow it to deal with rough conditions so this is a boat that can really handle any type of conditions it's not designed for rough water paddling like some performance touring kayaks this is designed for more for calm touring but if rougher conditions arise it can definitely handle them being 13 feet long this isn't designed for massive expeditions where you're covering huge huge amounts of ground but it still moves fast so it's for someone who wants a fun boat to paddle and is willing to give up some of that bomb-proof stability that some kayaks offer to have a boat that is fun to paddle and can travel faster it's for anyone from a beginner to an expert paddler this is a boat that anyone can really enjoy so the value well this boat is retails for 1600 us dollars and for touring kayak you know what that's pretty much bang on what i would expect to pay for this thing there are cheaper kayaks on the market absolutely i mean you can buy kayak on amazon an inflatable kayak for a hundred dollars you can buy a high-end carbon kevlar kayak for six thousand dollars or even more sixteen hundred dollars is a lot of money but it's not a ton for a kayak it puts it um in the same ballpark as a lot of other similar kayaks you pay a little bit more for the weight of this thing because it's thermoformed but to be quite honest for me and for a lot of people if you have the money that weight savings it's it's worth a fair bit you know it's it's a it's a real thing if you're going to use your kayak a lot and you're going to be carrying around a 45 pound versus a kayak versus a 55 pound or 60 pound kayak there's a big difference there i hope you like this video and you found it helpful if you did give it a thumbs up and subscribe to paddle tv but more importantly if you have any experience with the tampico 130 leave a comment down below and let people know uh what your thoughts are on it and what your experiences have been on it but also they have a couple of other models of or they had i'm not sure if they still hurricane still does uh another couple models of the tampico i'd love to know the difference between i haven't tried the other ones and so i'd love to know the difference between this new one and the old ones but this one here definitely gets two thumbs up from me this is another keeper boat for me man i'm gonna have to find some more storage space you know what it's worth it to keep fun kayaks around i'm just going to keep finding space to put them stick around we got lots more paddling tips gear reviews and paddling adventures coming your way