$1000 for Your First Kayak? Here's Why It Might Be Worth It!

Ken Whiting with PaddleTV and in this video I'm going to be talking about why you would pay more than a thousand dollars for a flat water kayak or a beginner kayak when you can get a flat water or beginner kayak for as little as a hundred dollars. The idea of this video is definitely not to convince you to spend more money on a kayak than you can reasonably afford because it doesn't make any sense whatsoever for you to trade or offset the joy you get from kayaking with financial stress. What I would recommend is that you spend as much as you comfortably can on a kayak because when you upgrade your kayak you get a lot more out of that kayak and it will in a lot of cases improve the whole paddling experience and the things that you get from upgrading or spending more on a flat water or beginner kayak you get added comfort. Well it depends on the kayak but you can get added comfort, added performance, added weight savings, a lighter weight kayak, added features, better build quality, there's a whole bunch of things you get. Let's dive right into it and we're going to start with comfort because that is one thing that you typically well the typically that all better kayaks offer more of. More comfort which translates to more enjoyment on the water. There's three ways that you get more comfort with an upgraded kayak. You get comfort with a better seat, you get comfort with better leg support and you get comfort with better foot support. Holy bugs, mosquitoes and black flies right now. Hard to stay focused when all these bugs are eating me. I gotta see if I have bug dope. Now when it comes to the seat of the kayaks, cheap kayaks have very basic seats. Oftentimes you're just sitting on the floor of the kayak directly on the plastic or you might have a thin piece of foam. Doesn't help that much. As you upgrade your kayak you're getting a more comfortable seat. You might get more cushioning for your tush. You also might get a more contoured seat. You'll get a better back support. Now back support helps can help in two different ways. For paddling you want back support that supports your lower back and promotes an upright sitting position for paddling but it's also nice to have higher back support so you can kick back and get into a comfy lounge position when you're not paddling. Now another type of upgrade you can get with seats is a framed seat or a suspension seat. The seat's actually raised off the floor of the kayak and it raises your butt higher than your feet. These frame seats can be wonderful upgrades for comfort in a variety of ways. The suspension seat, it really is nice because it contours to any butt shape not just the shape that they've created in the plastic but more than that when your butt is raised off the kayak so that your butt is higher than your feet all of a sudden the angle of your upper body until lower body is slacker than if you're sitting on the floor of the kayak and so your butt and your feet are at the same level. By having a slacker angle that really reduces can reduce some lower back pain and back discomfort and it accommodates people with tight hamstrings. It's definitely a comfort consideration worth keeping in mind if you experience lower back pain or you have tight hamstrings but it is an upgrade something you have to pay for. Now leg supports. Leg supports come in a variety of forms. Some kayaks have a leg supports under your legs to just support your legs to stop them from wanting to fall down. They're underneath your hamstrings. Other kayaks have leg supports around your knees to support your knees to again to hold your legs in position. Both do a great job. Now foot supports. Some kayaks, some cheap kayaks don't have any foot support at all and that is a real comfort issue because nothing if your feet aren't supported there's nothing stopping your legs from straightening straightening out. That is definitely a problem for people who aren't highly flexible but it's just you're having to hold your legs in a bent position rather than having them held in a bent position. Now cheap kayaks that have foot support they often come in the form of foot wells which are molded in to the kayak itself and they're not actual foot pegs. In an ideal scenario foot pegs provide support to the balls of your feet. When you're paddling you want to have support on the balls of your feet. You don't want them to be on your heels. The problem with foot wells is the support is at the heels and that does two things. For one when you press on it your ankle it puts stress on your ankle. When the support is on the ball of your foot your ankle and foot are in line. The other problem with foot wells is that there's only a handful of them in the boat to accommodate the people of different leg length and inevitably you're going to be in an in-between point. One position is going to be too far away the other position is going to be too close. It always seems to happen and so having firm adjustable foot pegs is a really nice upgrade. Now the next big upgrade you get when you spend more money on a kayak is performance and so let's talk about that but before we do I have to send a quick thanks to the sponsor of this video and that's very appropriately Hurricane Kayaks because they make a variety of kayaks in that a thousand dollar plus range for any there are a thousand dollars or more for very reasons that I'm going to be talking about here. Now I've reviewed a bunch of different Hurricane Kayaks and so I'll leave links in the description box down below to those kayaks so that you can see if any are the right fit for you but what I can tell you is I've really enjoyed all of them. Last year I actually even gave the Prima 125 Sport a Paddle TV award for being one of the best pieces of gear that I tested all year and I just tested another one of their beginner flat water kayaks not just beginner but flat water kayaks called the Santee 116 Sport and once again I really enjoyed it. One of the great things about Hurricane Kayaks is that they're thermoformed and it's the way they're made and it reduces the weight of the kayaks by around 20% over typical plastic kayaks that makes it so much easier to transport them around and they're stiffer they cut through the water really nice. Anyway I'll leave a link down below thanks for sponsoring this video Hurricane let's get back to it and talk about what kind of performance upgrades you get when you spend over a thousand bucks on a flat water kayak. Now one of the big problems with cheaper kayaks is not a lot of thought gets put into how the kayaks actually perform. Kayaks are designed primarily to be stable and they take other rather than performance they often take into consideration things like shipping costs and manufacturing costs rather than performance. The more you spend on a kayak the more thought goes into the performance of that kayak and that's often because kayak companies that make higher quality kayaks they're usually paddlers who are designing and passionate paddlers who are designing the boats. Now that's not always the case where the cheaper kayaks are come from are designed by people who aren't really enthusiastic paddlers but it is a good generalization. What does it mean that more thought goes into a kayak's design and how well it performs? Well-designed kayaks do a great job of marrying stability and performance and those two things often collide with one another because stable kayaks in a very simple way the wider a kayak is the more stable it is the narrower it is the faster it is and so some kayaks can just be really wide and stable but they don't they're not fun to paddle they're paddle like little barges. Good design can mesh those two things where you can have a stable kayak that's also fast and fun to paddle and that is one of the things you get when you get a higher quality kayak. Now fun to paddle might not be a big selling feature at the very beginning of your paddling journey but what I can tell you is that it's not going to be long after you start paddling if you really enjoy it that you're going to want a kayak that is more fun to paddle that you can cover more distance with that goes faster and it just feels more nimble on the water it's kind of like driving a school bus and driving a sports car eventually you drive it up you're gonna be like wow I kind of want something a bit more sporty. Now moving right along another upgrade that you get with more expensive kayaks is a safety element and this is particularly true for sit inside kayaks not as much with sit on top kayaks. With sitting inside kayaks as an example one key safety consideration is bulkheads in the kayak. Bulkheads are walls inside the kayak that separate the kayak into compartments and typically you have one you can have one directly behind the seat that separates the whole back of the kayak into one compartment and a bulkhead right in front of your feet to separate the front of the kayak into its own compartment. Now these bulkheads the safety element of these bulkheads is the fact that if you were to capsize only the center or cockpit area of the kayak is going to fill with water the two ends of the kayak are going to hold air because they're their own compartments that means your kayak is going to float so much better it makes it easier to swim the boat to shore tow the boat to shore do it on water re-entry you know just deal with your kayak if you don't have bulkheads in the kayak which most cheap sit inside kayaks don't if you were to capsize or a wave was to break over and swamp you the whole kayak gets swamped it's not going to sink to the bottom of the body of water but it's not going to be floating either and it's really hard to deal with and that is one of the reasons that the rule that you need to follow is if you're paddling a kayak that doesn't have bulkheads then you need to stay close enough to shore so that if you were to unexpectedly capsize you could comfortably swim to shore and that's limiting now that might be all you ever want to do and that's totally fine but if you want to explore further or you know that at some point you're going to want to explore further then you're going to need a kayak that will allow you to do that safely now features are another thing you get when you spend more on a kayak you get more features now the features that are important to you well that's up to you but as an example using the bulkheads that we just talked about those bulkheads create these separate compartments well these separate compartments are usually accessible by hatches on the deck of the kayak that provide now these relatively dry storage areas within the kayak which is a huge asset for if you want to do kayak camping trips for fishing for any time you want to bring gear along with you lots more features that you can get from paddle holders to rod holders to phone holders to you know the sky's limit and you can accessorize kayaks afterwards but some cheap kayaks are really difficult or don't accessorize nearly as well so it is nice to get a kayak with the features that you want right from the outside now moving on not surprisingly the more money you spend on a kayak the better quality the kayak is but that doesn't necessarily mean that the more durable the kayak is one of the cheapest types of kayaks is a rotor molded plastic kayak and it's the most common kayak that you see on the market it is the most durable type of kayak it's like a Tupperware container it can take impacts it can it's not going to really get punctures it can take abrasion it can be dragged on the ground within reason incredibly durable and affordable higher price materials thermoformed composite etc are less durable although they you know they are still they're not fragile by any means where quality really has an impact is with the outfitting and the features of a kayak and the outfitting is probably the biggest area a lot of the outfitting you get in cheap kayaks they're just not anchored well to the boat they're cheaply made and they're not going to last very long and they're not going to handle bigger paddlers very well better quality boats will have outfitting and features that last longer and handle harder use and bigger paddlers now lastly let's talk about weight of a kayak because the weight of a kayak can be a real stumbling block for people to go kayaking because it can be really difficult to transport or carry around a full-size kayak and if that stops you from getting on the water or if it just bothers you then spending a bit more money to get a lighter weight kayak makes a lot of sense there are exceptions to this rule but in general the more you spend the lighter a kayak you can get doesn't mean you will get a lighter kayak but it is it is something you can get when you spend more money let's take rotomolded plastic kayaks again that's the most common type of kayak that you see on the market they're also the heaviest type of kayak the most durable as well but they're the heaviest type of kayak in fact rotomolded kayaks can range from 50 pounds all the way to i've seen one i've tried one and tested one as much as 140 pounds and that's a lot of boat to move around if you are willing to spend 10 to 20 percent more money then you can get a thermoformed kayak which is about 15 to 20 percent lighter now 15 to 20 percent lighter may not seem like a lot but it really does make a big difference when you're carrying around a 12-foot kayak the difference between 40 pounds and 50 pounds is a big deal you can even take that a step further and get a composite kayak like a carbon and kevlar kayak now this is a big tends to be a big price jump but you can get even lighter kayaks so there you have it i hope this clarifies why you would pay a thousand bucks or more for a flat water kayak or a beginner kayak i hope also that you understand that i'm not saying that you really need to do that what i'm saying is that there's good reasons to upgrade it will pay dividends depending on the kayak you're getting with comfort performance safety quality and potentially the weight of the kayak you still have to answer the big question of what is the right kayak for you and for your budget if you're interested once again in a thermoformed kayak which really prioritizes performance and light weight do check out the hurricane kayaks that i reviewed that i've left links to in the description box down below because they have some they have some beauties stay tuned to paddle tv because i got a lot more paddling tips gear reviews and paddling adventures coming your way give this video a thumbs up if you've enjoyed it and subscribe to paddle tv if you haven't already