Wednesday, July 17, 2013

My Nelo Inuk

7/11/2013

The seat in my Inuk broke. I have the showroom version which is missing some of the touches that go into the retail version. So for a day, I switched back to my Solstice.

A nice feature of my Solstice is that it turns really well on an edge* and has great secondary stability. It’s also a pretty fast boat, or at least, I used to think so.

Switching back from the Inuk, it felt sluggish. Every stroke felt as though I was paddling into a breeze. I took out my GPS to measure my speed. It was true that compared to most paddlers in most boats, I was moving fast. But it was half a knot slower for more work than my Inuk.

The next day I fixed my Inuk. It swims like a seal** and there is no going back to anything less.


* You can lean way over without capsizing.

** Originally I had thought to use “like a Lab” as my analogy since I’m so very fond of the way they swim. It came to my attention however that a more objective observer might use words like “enthusiastic” or “happy” rather than “fast” or “graceful” so I settled for seal since they’re sort of dog like.


My repair.
kayak repair

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