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


Shadow Lake
( 40.35025, -74.09585 )

  1. Navesink River - Fair Haven ( 40.36647, -74.04204 )
  2. Navesink River - Red Bank ( 40.35212, -74.06980 )
  3. Navesink River - Rumson (E) ( 40.37649, -73.99990 )
  4. Navesink River - Rumson (W) ( 40.37650, -74.01310 )
  5. Shadow Lake - Middletown ( 40.34698, -74.10476 )
  6. Swimming River - Middletown ( 40.34831, -74.08318 )
  7. Swimming River - Red Bank ( 40.33838, -74.08815 )

This small lake is about a mile long. The only public launch is at the west end in Stevenson Park, off West Front Street. There is a channel from there to the lake, but good luck finding it – be prepared to run aground. Fortunately, the bottom is firm sand, and a short tow on foot will get you out to deeper water. It is also possible to go a short ways up the creek.

Printed from njkayak.net