Posted by Ted on October 16, 2002 at 12:14:17:
In Reply to: first kayak. please help posted by johnny castro on October 16, 2002 at 00:34:40:
Unfortunately Ocean Kayak has some sort of sick plan to keep the kayak industry in the dark ages. Ocean Kayak won a paten on center seating overlapping footwells and defended it last year sucessfully. Cobra Kayaks and Malibu Ocean Sports (formerly Competition Kayaks) incorporated the overlaping center seating foot wells into their tandem designs, the top deck design on the Corba tandem and the MOS tandem is lightyears ahead in design, but the elimination of the center footwells has ruined two fantastic designs. In the Cobras and the MOS tandems, the large hull access hatches get your gear off the deck and in the boat; by loading your gear in the hull, the center of gravity is lowered and the seating can be raised up out of the water.
The antique design of the Malbiu II (Ocean Kayak) tandem with very poor in hull access forces more of your gear on deck, forcing the seating lower to compensate for lower center of gravity, creating a wetter ride. The other pitfall with poor inhull access is that you launch and land in the surf with equipment and game exposed. Also shorter tandems like the Malibu II place the paddlers close together which creates some interesting tandem paddling at times.
The Cobra and MOS tandems have great advantages, but their current drawback is with the lack of overlapping footwells in the center, the center seating is pretty much gone. The picture above is my Malibu Ocean Sports Pro2 tandem. I bought it just a before the OK won their court battle. You can see the footwells that are now not available on the Cobra or MOS.
The large rectangulart hatch you see in the Cobra Tandem and the Cobra Fish N Dive. The Large rectangular Hatch you see on Malibu Ocean Sports Tandem and Explorer (in my oppinion) are the difference. When my family is in the car my kayak doubles as a cartop carrier. I stuff the hull with everything I can fit in there. 2 paddles 5 pfds, two seats, 6 fising poles, 3 wetsuits, two large tackle boxes, a couple of dry bags and more.
When you are out in the ocean the hatch makes stowing your gear simple. I wiped out in the surf once and my kayak floated around upside down. Everthing was inside except my sunglasses.
If you look under Competition Kayak on paddling.net, you can see my review of the Pro2 tandem. You really need to get on several kayaks and even if that means renting a few. If your (tandem) kayak becomes a solo platform for you, then your research is going to be twice as hard as the options are not there.
I know I ride Ocean Kayak pretty hard when it comes to this discussion. Ocean Kayak has a few really good Kayaks in their line. The Cabo and the Scupper Pro TW are probably the best touring style kayaks out there. The construction and quality of their kayaks are probably the top in the industry. I am hoping that with the release of the new prowler they might get their design deparment to wake up.
-Ted