Boats & Accessories
Don't spend a fortune on a PFD, or Personal Flotation Device, commonly known as a life preserver. Unless you plan to go far offshore in deep water, you will never need it or wear it. Most of the places I go, self-rescue would be a matter of standing up, or a couple of strokes to shallow water or the shore.
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Specs:
- Length: 10 feet overall
- Beam: 32"
- Height: 14" (hull only)
- Weight: 51 pounds
- Capacity: 275 pounds
More: Lifetime Tamarack Angler 100 ...
This is for sit-on-top kayaks with closed hulls. Open-hull sit-inside kayaks don't really need hatches.
You can order any kind and size of hatch on eBay. They are easy to install - just trace the hole on the hull and cut it out with a jigsaw. A hatch like this one has a storage bag for small items like keys and phone, which removes for access to the inside of the hull.
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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 an expensive 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.
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This is a cable-lock I made, about 12 feet long. It is just 3/16" coated steel cable from the hardware store, with crimp ferrules, and a big steel ring in one end. The ferrules fit through the scupper holes on the boat, but the steel ring does not. Together with any padlock, this will secure the boat (or several) to your truck, roof rack, a tree, or anything else that is handy. You can take this cable with you, it will give you peace of mind if you leave the boat unattended to go exploring on land.
The object is not to stop a determined thief - you can't do that. It is to stop someone from casually taking your boat with their bare hands. Don't lock the boat by the handles - they are easily cut with a pocket knife and cheap to replace. Run the cable through a scupper hole, and a thief would have to destroy the boat to steal it. If your boat doesn't have scupper holes, you can probably find someplace to thread the cable though, or make a suitable hole in the seat.
You can find a cable like this all set to go on Amazon for under 20 bucks. Where I used a steel ring, you could use a second padlock.
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You'd be surprised where you can get a good kayak nowadays. Like these places:
Dick's and West Marine have good selections of kayaks, parts, and accessories. Walmart and Tractor Supply also have a kayak selection, in-season. I hate to say it, but sometimes you can find good deals at Amazon too. Many Walmarts also have live earthworms for fishing.
It's just a matter of time before they show up at your local supermarket. (Kayaks, not earthworms. Maybe earthworms too, if Bill Gates gets his way. Yum!)
More: Stores ...