Plastic Kayaks

If you go online, you can find a good deal of kayak snobbery. If you are going fishing in the ocean, or white-water, then yes, you could justify a better boat. But if you are just going on calm inland water, you really can't beat Lifetime boats for price, handling, and features. And they are indestructible. Lifetime also makes Emotion kayaks.

One more note: if you are going inland, then yellow is a great color for a kayak - it makes you easy to see and hopefully harder to run over by drunken motorboats. But if you are going in the ocean, yellow has a major drawback: Sharks are fascinated by yellow. In World War II, the Navy found out that yellow life jackets were a very bad idea. Online, you can find multiple videos of sharks harassing kayaks, and in every case it is a yellow hull. I even have personal experience: Once on a dive I got into a school of spiny dogfish, and they took turns trying to steal any yellow gear I had. Fortunately, dogfish are small and harmless, and the whole thing was kind of comical.

How They are Made


South River
( 40.43920, -74.36810 )

  1. Raritan River - Edison ( 40.48791, -74.38382 )
  2. Raritan River - Sayreville ( 40.47450, -74.35606 )
  3. South River - Old Bridge ( 40.41228, -74.36362 )
  4. South River - Sayreville ( 40.45397, -74.37222 )
  5. South River - South River ( 40.45838, -74.38361 )

The launch point is on the river behind the little strip mall off Route 527 / Old Matawan Rd. I have never had a problem parking here, although I don't think this would be a good place for a large group to show up. Entry can be messy if the water is low.

The river is tidal and brackish at this point. If the tide is high, you can go upstream to the left, under the highway. Pick your way around all the fallen trees and have fun avoiding all the dead-ends, and you can go all the way to the Duhernal Lake dam. The lake itself is off limits.

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