It’s funny that one rarely hears of anyone referring to canoes and kayaks as boats, probably because the word boat has utilitarian connotations associated with it, instead of the more soulful feelings conjured up with using the words canoe or kayak what but that’s what they are - boats. Growing up, I had not much experience with paddling. I think my parents just weren’t into it very much. I had gone hiking and backpacking a lot with my parents and Scouting/Venturers but not so much paddling, although I did feel a great lure towards it. At one point in my youth I was somewhat obsessed with canoeing, or rather the idea of it. I had watched Waterwalker, Bill Mason’s 1984 feature length documentary about him exploring the areas around Lake Superior with his canoe and it fascinated me. The beauty of the landscape and the adventure of canoeing in the wilderness captivated me as a 12 year old. But at that time, I did not do anything about my attraction towards paddling, other than taking a short canoe paddling course on the Ottawa River.
Years went by and during my university time, I ignored my passion for the outdoors, aside from car camping trips. After I started working full time, I started to rekindle my interest for hiking and began backpacking, mostly solo in different areas in Ontario. I did this for many years, my yearly ‘summer vacation’ (more like autumn vacation) usually consisting of a week’s backpacking somewhere but not much consideration for purchasing a boat. In hindsight, this was partly because I had no place to store one, partly because I really didn’t know what boat I would want and partly because the backpacking world around me was still relatively new and there was much to be explored still in that regards.
Then there was that fateful day in spring 2008. A bunch of people including myself were gathered at my friend Steve’s parents’ cottage on Rice Lake for the May 24 weekend for some partying. We started poring over some canoe and kayak marketing literature Steve picked up at the Adventure Show in Toronto a week or two back, at first just a curiosity, but turned into an obsession by the end of the weekend. After all, this cottage is on a lake, but there were no boats to use there, only a dilapidated aluminum rowboat hiding in the bushes so the lake being in front of our faces led to the itch for some paddling. As with many sports nowadays, the amount of choices and styles of products is simply astounding and actually quite overwhelming. I had only been in a kayak once – a day trip in a rented tandem one at Arrowhead that couldn’t track a straight line if it’s life depended on it. Despite that experience I figured I would prefer a kayak over a canoe. To me, a kayak has a more pure and intimate paddling experience much better suited for solo trips, but that’s a topic for another discussion.
Aside from which make to get, the number of choices are incredible: hard or soft chine, Greenland or North American style, skeg or pedal rudder, whitewater, river or ocean kayak, what style hatches, rotomolded polyethylene , fiberglass or Kevlar construction, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17ft long, number of hatches??? In the end, only one really stood out as the clear choice for a rough and tumble, jack-of-all-trades multipurpose performance kayak, and that ended up being the rotomolded Wilderness Systems Tempest 170.
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