Sea Eagle 420x Review - The Most Versatile Inflatable Kayak Ever?

Ken Whiting with PaddleTV with yet another in-depth kayak review and in this video I'm reviewing an inflatable kayak the Sea Eagle 420X or Explorer. Now this isn't my first experience with the Explorer kayaks from Sea Eagle. I reviewed the 380X while testing that boat on the Nantahala River in North Carolina a couple of years ago. The 420X is a bigger boat and I'm going to be testing it a very different way. I'm taking it on a four-day river trip kayak camping trip. Has white water, has flat water, has everything you could ask for from a river trip. It will be the ultimate test for the 420X and so before I take this thing on that test let me tell you a bit more about it. The Sea Eagle 420X has a retail price starting at $1,300 US dollars and that comes with two paddles, two seats, a pump and a carry bag. The boat is 14 feet long. It's 39 inches wide. It weighs 44 pounds or 20 kg and it has a capacity of 850 pounds or 388 kg. Its primary use is all conditions up to class 4 white water and up to three people. Now the boat features a rigid drop stitch floor that sits on top of an outer floor that provides valuable extra protection. It has a large removable rear skeg. It has three separate air chambers for safety. It has 16 self-bailing floor drains, carry handles at either end, 26 d-rings to secure seats and gear and it comes in a variety of configurations that you can choose from. So enough talking about the kayak let's get it on the water and so let's go to the Des Moines River for a four-day river trip. So that was really a bucket list type of trip. The Des Moines River is a world-class canoe tripping river at least that's what it's known for and so taking the inflatable kayak down was a new twist and the primary reason I took the inflatable kayak is so that I could run more white water than I would have been able to in the canoe. Did it work? Well let's get into the full review and I will get to that. Let's start like I always do with portability. Now this is a 44 pound boat. That's not a light portable kayak. It's not a heavy portable kayak. It's kind of middle of the road. It's a substantial boat. It's 14 feet long and so you expect it to be a little heavier than other portables but what you are getting for that little bit of extra weight is durability and we'll get more into that. Otherwise the bag that this thing comes in is really simple. One of the great things about the simple bag is that you don't have to be an artist to fold this thing up and make it fit in the bag. You can be lazy like I often am at the end of a trip and just fold it together pretty haphazard and get it into the bag. Now the downside is the bag doesn't have any bells and whistles. It doesn't have roller wheels. It doesn't have a backpack harness system or shoulder straps to carry. Really it's got a couple of straps to carry. So carrying it for over a long distance isn't easy at 44 pounds but you know what it packs down for the size of the thing. It packs down nice and small 44 pounds for what you're getting is very reasonable. This is a very portable kayak. It'll fit anywhere in your car or at home. Now let's talk about stability and performance. Now starting with stability at 39 inches the 420X is one of the wider kayaks on the market which should mean that it's one of the most stable kayaks on the market and it definitely is. I even spent a good chunk of my time on the trip standing up and paddling it like a stand-up paddleboard when after a long day of sitting my butt was getting sore and I just wanted to stand. It would also be a great platform for standing up and fishing. You would be really hard pressed to flip this thing. You're more likely to, way more likely to just fall out and this thing would remain upright. That's how stable it is. Now let's talk about performance and usually performance is impacted by stability. If the boat is wide and stable it generally doesn't perform that well but there's two types of performances we need to talk about when it comes to this boat. There's flat water performance and then there's rapids or white water or current performance because those things are very different. Let's start with the flat water performance. Now at 14 feet long this is a fairly long inflatable kayak. It's one of the longer inflatable kayaks you can get and that's why it has a capacity of up to three people. Three people can go in here although it'd be a bit tight you want to have maybe a couple kids or at least smaller people. I think it's great. Very comfortable comfortable for two people. I was using it as a solo boat with a ton of space for gear but I'm getting off topic. Flat water performance. Being a long boat typically speaking longer boats are faster and they track better. Now this boat when you when I put the removable fin in it tracked surprisingly well for such a wide boat without a keel without a bow that's designed to slice through the water. That being said it's not a fast boat. You know it's 39 inches wide. A wide boat you end up pushing more water. It's not going to be fast. That's just the nature of it but we did cover over three days 40 miles mostly of flat water and so it can cover distances. It's not it's not a really slow boat either. It's kind of middle of the road. One thing I will say about flat water is a headwind or wind in general does have a real impact on this boat. More a headwind because it's so wide and it doesn't glide great doesn't carry a ton of speed and so we did have to fight a headwind. It wasn't that I couldn't deal with it but it definitely slowed things down. Now let's talk about whitewater performance. Now when it comes to whitewater performance they say that this boat is good up to class 4 whitewater. That's one of the reasons I took it on the Des Moines trip. There is a number of class 4 even class 5 rapids that I hoped that this kayak would be able to allow me to challenge myself on. Basically avoid portaging. Unfortunately that wasn't the case and I think in hindsight the wording that this kayak is good up to class 4 whitewater is very accurate. It just doesn't include class 4 whitewater. This boat is highly capable and fun to paddle in class 1, 2, and 3 whitewater. When we came across those types of rapids we were at ease. We were relaxed. We were having fun with it. It was so much more relaxing than a canoe. We were just pounding through rapids that in a canoe we would have taken time to scout because this thing is so forgiving in class 1, 2, and 3 whitewater. Now the reason it ends there. You can't realistically take this thing and into class 4 and 5 whitewater and the reason we couldn't run any of the class 4 and 5 rapids is two big reasons. This boat does not have a lot of rocker which is the curvature of the kayak when you look at it from the side and because of that waves that we hit, bigger waves, would come right over the bow. The bow would pierce right into the wave rather than go over it and then all of a sudden all that water was in the boat. When this boat has a bunch of water in it is extremely heavy like any boat and very difficult to maneuver at that time. You basically you're at the whim of the river at that point and so keeping the boat dry in big waves was hard to impossible. Not a big deal in class 1, 2, and 3 where you don't really have to make any serious maneuvers. Even if you do get swamped that's okay because you're not really having to avoid anything significant. The second reason that it isn't appropriate for class 4 and 5 is because it does have 16 drain holes. They drain the water out but they don't drain the water out quick enough to have an impact in the middle of a rapid. So if you do swamp, you're swamped pretty much through that rapid and then it will drain after that rapid and so for technical whitewater, class 4 and 5 whitewater, where you have to make multiple moves one after the other, once you're swamped you can't have the confidence that you can make those moves. Now that's deep diving into it because the reality is most people who are by a boat like this are not interested in class 4 and 5 whitewater like I am. They're interested in running fast moving water current class 1, 2, maybe class 3. This thing is an absolute dream in that type of whitewater. Definitely take the skeg out. You do not want to run whitewater with a skeg in. Not only will it break but it can cause problems. So that being said, highly maneuverable in the whitewater. It's extremely stable in the whitewater even with the load that we had. I had a lot of gear in this boat. I had around over a hundred pounds worth of gear. It wasn't a problem whatsoever. Now something I did do is I added the thigh straps that the Sea Eagle sells and that gives you more control. You just clip them into the d-rings and that's the joy of this boat. It has so many d-rings to clip in. I actually added a couple of d-rings once again expecting to run some challenging whitewater. I didn't want my gear to move anywhere and so I added a couple of d-rings which you can do easily. Sea Eagle sells d-rings. They sell a variety of accessories that you can add to the boat quite easily. Now on the topic of adding things, one thing that I should have added but I got lazy right before the trip. I was so busy getting ready and I didn't add was a foot peg system because the boat does not come with foot pegs and I would say that's probably the only outfitting weakness of this kayak. Let's talk about comfort because that really is more of a comfort thing. You have a couple of seat options. This is the I believe it's called the Pro Seat. I'm not sure exactly about that one. It's comfortable, provides great support for lounging but also when you're paddling it's got enough of a cushion to keep your butt quite comfortable over a long day and elevated off the floor so that you're if there's water in this boat you're not sitting in the water. The foot pegs missing is a matter of comfort but not a huge, a little bit of comfort. Your legs do just sit on the lie against the side of these tubes and so that's nice but it's always nice to have foot pegs especially when you're paddling. I didn't add the foot pegs which I should have done but so what I did instead is I added a cam strap across here and use that cam strap to put my feet against. Small tweaks that you can make with a boat that is this customizable. Speaking of customization and to show how easy it is to customize at the back of the boat I even added a yak attack camera mount so that I could film the adventure. Now something else to consider when it comes to comfort is that because this kayak is so wide you need to have a fairly long paddle in order to paddle comfortably. Now the paddle that Sea Eagle provides with this kayak is almost 250 centimeters which is pretty good. I mean I'd say they got that right. A lot of inflatable kayaks that come with paddles, the paddles are too short and it drives me nuts. It makes it really uncomfortable because every stroke you have to cross the boat instead of just paddling normally. If you're going to use your own paddle for this boat you definitely want a paddle in that 250 centimeter range. Now let's talk durability. One of the benefits of the Explorer is that it's designed to be durable and I alluded to this at the beginning when I talked about the weight. At 44 pounds it's not the lightest inflatable kayak but typically the lighter the inflatable kayak, the lighter the kayak period, the less durable it is and that is the case with this boat. It is a little bit heavier than some of Sea Eagle's other inflatable kayaks but it's also extremely durable. The Explorer series is designed to handle it all and that's why it has an extra it has a floor layer on this boat so it provides these top tubes that you see with added well just more protection. I was not overly concerned about these boats at all going through the whitewater portaging these boats. I got a little bit tired of carrying it because it's not a great boat to portage over really nasty terrain. That's a different topic altogether. At one point I just dragged it. I mean the rocks weren't sharp it was smooth and it was moss covered but still I dragged I had the confidence in the middle of nowhere to drag this kayak across a portage and that's because it's made solid. It's very durable. I'm not condoning dragging this boat. I don't think it's a good idea but if you were in my shoes you'd understand why. So who is the 420 Explorer for? Well similar to the other Explorers this is a boat that doesn't specialize in any one type of paddling. It's extremely versatile. It's a boat that you can use in whitewater class one to three. It's a boat you can use on flat water. You can use it in open water. I mean really you can use it anywhere. It's not going to do amazing anywhere but it's going to be very good everywhere. It's good from one to three people although as I mentioned before three people in this boat is a little tight so they better be smaller people. I think it's a perfect size tandem kayak and great solo kayak for people who do like going on kayak camping trips because it's a great kayak camping platform. It's also a great fishing kayak fishing platform. Once again extremely versatile kayak. Now the only type of person I don't think this is well suited for is someone who has a very specific type of paddling that they like to do. If you have a very specific type of paddling that you like to do get a boat that's specifically designed for that type of paddling. Now last but not least let's talk about value. 1,300 US dollars for this boat comes with seats, comes with two paddles, comes with the bag, comes with a pump, repair kit. I mean that is great value. I don't I really don't care what people say. That's really great value if this boat is the right boat for you and that's really the case that I found with all Seagull kayaks. Their kayaks have been great value and so there you go. I guess the only question that remains is is this the right kayak for you and only you can answer that question. I hope you guys have enjoyed this review. If you have give it a thumbs up, subscribe to PaddleTV if you haven't already and watch the full Des Moines paddling adventure on my because it was a real it was a real adventure and there's a number of other adventures on there too. Leave a comment down below if you have experience in this boat. Have you done some kayak camping in this boat? Have you used this boat with three people? Any customizations you've done? Share that with everybody in the comments down below and we'll see you again soon for another paddling tip, gear review or paddling adventure.