Category Archives: Gumotex IKs

I’ve had several Gumotex IKs

Gumotex Solar 410C – the new Sunny

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In 2017 the Solar 410C became the Solar 3

410c

The Solar 410C was a step up from the short-lived, fixed-seat Solar 2 (below). The price in the UK with two seats and a skeg was £470.
It became for all intents and purposes the new Sunny, because the old discontinued 405 Solar and Solar 2 (below) were usefully long touring boats ruined with fixed seat designs: either the original space-wasting thwarts (at least they were replaceable) or worse still, Helios-style fixed seats in the half-coat (Lite Pack) Solar 2 – the pits!

410prv

Luckily, the Solar 410 ‘C’ (for ‘Convertible’) has two or even three seats which can be removed and one re-installed the other way round to make a big, single seat kayak with lots of room for stuff – nice. You also get adjustable footrest pads (see here for a lighter and simpler idea), the usual half-arsed cargo net in the back, and the usual floor PRV too. Gumotex never seem to mention this useful feature, but of them I am a big fan.
If not included, the black plastic skeg might be extra (and is worth getting). On the 410C you don’t need a skeg-mounting patch at both ends because unlike a Sunny, you simply move the seats forward or back on the D-rings, not turn them the other way. In the unlikely event your 410C doesn’t have a skeg patch, it’s not so hard to glue one on.

The stats for the Solar 410C are 4.1m long (Sunny 3.85m); 80cm wide (Sunny 77cm), weight 17kg (Sunny 16kg) and payload no less than 270 kilos (Sunny 180kg). With pressure still at 0.2 bar/3psi, that looks to be quite a jump in payload for just a little extra volume. If you can imagine three hefty adults sat in the new 410C, that equals 270 kilos – the slightest wave will surely swamp the boat.

But one thing I do wonder with a 410C (and why I got a Grabner instead, even at nearly twice the price), is that with my weight I suspect the longer hull would sag even more than the Sunny. This was why I moved on from the Sunny after many years, although here I discuss ways of getting around that flaw

Gumotex Solar 405/ Solar 2
The original, pre-2007 Solar 405 (below) was similar to a Sunny of the time but longer. Unfortunately it used space-wasting thwarts (fat air cushions) for seats. For that reason a Sunny was always better solo touring choice at the time.


The post 2007 ‘Solar 2s’ (right) became even less versatile: horrible fixed seats like the Twist and Helios may give great support, but along with fixed footrests it all means it can’t be set up optimally for solo paddling without chopping it all out.
As on all post-2007 Solars for a while, only the outer wet surfaces were coated, and then the Solar 2 was dropped in favour of the broadly similar but more popular Sunny MkIII, the semi-decked 3.8-metre Helios II (also with fixed seats and decking) or even the shorter Twist I. By 2013 the 410C set things straight again and that soon became the Solar 3 which is still around today.

Gumotex Seawave kayak preview – 0.25 bar

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Seawave main page (less speculation; more up to date user-info)

seawaves

The Seawave was released in 2013 and in 2016 a near-identical model came out with a rudder option. The Seawave can be used as a single, double or triple, and is sold in Euroland for around €1625 or £1425 in the UK. They used to be a bargain. Not any more.
In 2023 the Seashine version came out – a Seawave with a drop stitch floor (like the Thaya and Rush); slightly heavier, wider and longer and a lot more expensive.

My stats for my Seawave are 4.5m x 78cm wide and 17kg plus a claimed payload of 250kg which sounds plausible. Significantly, the Seawave’s pressure is rated at 0.25 bar (3.6psi) all round, midway between the Gumotex IK norm of 0.2 and Grabner’s 0.3 bar. Some of Gumotex’s orange series whitewater boats run 0.25 and their IKs were never that shoddy. Having said that, the PRV in the floor of the Seawave has the same ordinary rating you’ll find in a Twist or a Palava or probably any other Gumotex IK (more here) but the adjacent sticker claims 0.25 bar max. It’s the side tubes that now take 0.25 bar, not 0.2. What they now call Nitrilon is not like the stiff old hypalon-like Nitrilon of my early Gumboats. Increasing hull pressure is one way of getting a more rigid and therefore faster IK, but it’s the integrity of the ‘I-beam’ floor that’s the usual limitation. The Seawave has a pressure-release valve in the floor but not on the side tubes, and I read these pressures are said to be on the conservative side. You can’t over-inflate the floor but these Gumboats can handle more in the side tubes providing you watch it when out of the water in the heat.

seawavecat

The Seawave is long for an IK, but with just a skeg (optional, but there’s a  rudder now), you wonder if this could be hard work to turn into the wind. However, in France kayaks destined for sea use (beyond a certain distance from the shore) must be homologated or approved in some way, and the Seawave has passed this test.

gumtip

The great thing with the velcro deck (for one or two) is that it can be removed; on my Incept I paddled like this approximately 99.9% of the time, with the deck rolled to one side. Even at the slightly higher pressures, I have to say at one point in the video I noticed the Seawave bending with the swell. My Sunny used to do this, taking on water over the low sides, but with a deck that ought not be less of a problem, even if you imagine there’ll be some seepage through the velcro in heavy conditions or white water.

grabend

Flexing is a problem with any long inflatable and even my short and high-pressure Grabner (left) flexed in certain conditions. Manufacturers get round it with metal frames (Feathercraft, Advanced Elements), twin side tubes (some Grabners, Gumo Seakers, Incept) stiff fabric (Incept) or just high pressures like Grabner, but that demands very good construction. Drop-stich panels are the new way of doing it now.

Scotty

There are more impressions as well as some nice pictures from an actual owner, Norman, right here (translated from French). He ran a 410C for a few years and talks of pumping his Seawave right up to 0.35 (5psi) bar which makes for good speed (6kph average he claims). That is 40% above the recommendation so let’s hope the seams on the Seawave can take it, cap’n.

mod-drainer
sw14

It looks like grey, Halkey-like valves in the back, not the old-style black ones that Gumo used. And I see that Gumotex have again adapted an idea that I had on my Sunny years ago (right), a drain hole at the back. Only theirs features a neat sliding cover. It could all be the normal process of improvement of course, but I recall that after I had some smaller skegs made for my Sunny (and sold to a few others), Gumotex reduced the size of theirs to the current black plastic ones. And then the velcro deck idea. Whatever, it’s gratifying to see ideas I have tried or written about actually making it into production.

Enough of this speculation!
Actual impressions on receiving my boat here, followed by half a decade of very enjoyable Seawave paddling.

Summer Isles Gallery with kayaks

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A sixty-six-photo summary of our summer in the Summer Isles with a little bit of Orkney.
See also: Summer Isles Kayaking Guide

Whitewater test: Packraft vs Gumotex IK

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A two-minute vid, possibly a bit too long…

Don’t get excited, we’re talking a few hundred metres of Class 1.1, but that’s as good as it gets around here.
We’ve had a lot of rain in the last week, enough to make the only paddleable river – the short Osgaig – worth a poke with a paddle. I was here with the Yak last year at slightly lower levels, so this time was expecting a smoother run in the Solar (now with an improved seat-foot set up), followed immediately by a comparison run in the Alpacka Yak.

Gumotex Solar IK
The good thing with the Solar is it’s old, worth next to nothing but tough, so can be dragged like a hardshell with the Yak in the back. I considered jury rigging some thigh straps; it could be done now through the new footrest pipe and around the seat mounts, but looking at the river as I drove up, it wasn’t really worth it. Thigh straps are what makes any deckless boat – air-filled or hard-shelled – much more controllable when things get choppy. Even WW packrafters insist straps are the way to go.

With the skeg off, it’s easy to seal launch off a grassy bank and into the scrum just below the waterfall which looks a bit complicated so was no less inviting this year.  As I spilled over the first little step I tried surfing like people do. But the Solar wasn’t especially dynamic or there wasn’t a strong enough recirculation going on to make it feel interesting. So I swung round and set off. Even at full flow, the Osgaig is a shallow, bony river better suited to an injection-molded TNP ‘spaddle’, not 220 quid’s worth of carbon-light Werner Corry which was picking up new scrapes as I jabbed at the water to keep the boat on line. It was really quite effortful with the Solar, at 3m or nearly 10 feet it’s perhaps a bit long for this sort of thing. I hit the one or two rapids full face, kicking up a satisfying splash and remembering that ‘bring it on’ exhilaration when trying an IK and white watering for the very first time on the Salmon River in Idaho all those years ago.


The river branched near the Loch; left looked all froth but too shallow so I swung right but again scrapped and shoved from one bar to the next. I was hoping to make it all the way to Loch Osgaig but up ahead I saw the tree strainer I recalled from last year so, stuck on another rock and by now steaming out of the ears in my heavy drysuit, I stepped out and walked back upriver.

Alpacka Yak Packraft
A few minutes later I hopped into the snug Yak, spun round and slipped over the first drop. Spinning back, I tried to surf as I’d just done in the Sunny but it wasn’t happening. I guess the Yak is just too wide, light and too much drag to fight the flow.
Off I went downstream, trying to avoid getting snagged while lining up to take the peak of what waves there were. Jammed in the yellow tub, sat lower and with higher sides, it felt much more responsive than the longer Solar and so was less effort to ride. Perhaps part of it was that a good line is less vital; most of the rapids I could have taken backwards and that added up to more fun.
So there it is: a tight-fitting packraft is more fun on easy white water than a 3-metre IK. When I got snagged towards the end, I just stepped out, threw the boat ashore, and staggered out over the slimy boulders. 

IK&P Picture of the Week

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Le Grand Gonflateur himself, Gael A sent me this image to illustrate something. Its composition and colouring was so magical I’m compelled to elevate it to the IK&P Picture of the Week.
Captured in 2005, the location is the River Epte, a tributary of the Seine in Normandy and site of Monet’s no less idyllic 1899 painting, ‘Waterlilly Pond’ (left). It looks like Gael is sliding down a burst canal bank on his H2, while his trusty compadre observers from the reassuringly stable platform of a Mk1 Sunny gumboat. Behind him a sign warns ‘Access Interdite – Danger [sauf gonflards] and nearby a docile cow nuzzles the trunk of an oak tree quivering in its prime.
A serene snapshot of rubber boating bliss.

Gumotex Solar 300 improvements

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See also
IK&P Glues and Repairs

They don’t make the Solar 300 anymore – it’s been superseded by the lighter Twists, although the similar full-coat, white-water Safari is still made All these Gumboats and a few others may benefit from the footrest mod as described below, as might bigger Gumboats which both use a similarly mushy footrest pillow.
Our Solar dated from 2006 and although (or because) it doesn’t get used much it still looks like new. And it’s lost no air to speak of lying in the garden for over a month (can’t say the same for my Incept K40).

gumsolarstac

But the seat/footrest arrangement is poor, like all Gumos from that era. The seat pivots at the right angle base as you lean on it, because the top edge is attached to the bottom edge instead of the actual boat, like any sensible IK. You lean back, it lifts up – no good. I messed around a lot with my old Sunny before I got smart and simply glued some D-rings onto the top of the hull sides, which Gumo started doing soon after. This way when you lean back or brace against the footrest, you’re locked to the boat and so get more drive.

The pillow thwart footrest is OK, but I ditched that at the same time on my Sunny to use a small Otter box. For the Solar, the g-friend is short and can’t reach the footrest pillow even set right back.

I glued on a pair of big D-rings with Aquaseal, bonding much cheaper PVC D-rings to the Nitrilon hull sides to provide a fixed point to tension the seat back. I did this because the price of RIB hypalon D-rings is crazy: from £20 to £40 for one patch!
I Iused single-part Aquasure urethane sealant/adhesive (‘Aquaseal‘ in North America). Allow Aquasure or similar to half-cure in air for 30 minutes, then stick together and let it ‘seal’ to itself is a way of bonding anything – even non-compatible rubber-based Nitrilon to PVC. SeamGrip is a runnier version of Aquasure to get into cracks and seams and though I’ve not tried it yet, British-made Stormsure is the same thing.
That was years ago. Maybe it worked fine but these days, I’d sooner MYO D-rings from hypalon off-cuts and use 2-part glue.

Then on the Solar I removed the footrest pillow and replaced it with a bit of sawn-off four-inch drain pipe, taping the pipe ends to limit any rubbing against the hull. The seat straps were sewn into a loop and clipped to the D-rings.

This mod will improve bracing in the Solar: the bane of all IKs (and SoTs for that matter) which without bracing are like paddling a log. The footrest (the tape goes through a slot under the pipe) can easily be moved, even when inflated and will transform the Solar which is a nippy IK. The next step would be to fit thigh straps as found on the current Safari – then you can do cool stuff like this – but for the use our Solar gets, the current improvements will do.

Recently I also glued on the later style skeg patch to take the plastic fin. No more faffing about with butterfly nuts and bolts and bits of bent alloy. The patch costs £12 and so does the skeg, which I also fitted to my Grabner Amigo.

gumoldnewskeg

Lurgainn – linking the Lochs

An afternoon’s paddle along the lochs strung out below Stac Pollaidh mountain, with a bit of portaging in between and a jog back to the car to finish up.

Gumotex Swing IKs

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Updated: Summer 2020

See also: 2020 Rush models with D/S floors (like the Thaya)

swinginovlites
gumotexfabrics18

The Swings are fixed-decked solo or tandem IKs pitched at recreational users who seek the reassurance of a very wide boat and the dryness of a deck.

There were once and are maybe still two versions of Swing 1 and 2. Innova distributors in the US show red/black green/grey hulled models which they still list as made from Nitrilon Lite™. Europe and maybe elsewhere never had the black-hulled models and are made in Nitrilon (Nitrilon Lite™ has been dropped). The claimed weights for identical boats from EU/US are the same. You presume the green/grey doubles are now identical. See the table right about IK materials with more here. 

SWING I ▪ Length 3.16m ~ 10′ 4″ ▪ Width  87cm ▪ Weight 11.3kg ▪ Maximum load 120kg ~ 265 lbs

SWING II ** ▪ Length – 4.02m – 13 feet  ▪ Width  87cm ▪ Weight  14.3kg ▪ Maximum load  220kg ~ 450lbs

Note that what Innova in North America call the Swing EX is a Framura in Europe – a slimmer, fixed-deck, 4.1m IK which is much more suited to solo touring and inshore sea kayaking.

swingbots
swingwide
swingbow

As others have commented, they appear to be taking on IKs from Advanced Elements and even the bird’s-eye view is similar. From the profiles it appears they’re more ellipsoid or ‘lemon-shaped’ than other models, or maybe it’s just that they’re substantially wider which exaggerates this impression.

The Swings use 2 or 3 curved alloy crossbars to keep the deck taught (similar system on my Incept and Seawave) and make room for the legs, as well as spread and form the width of the boat. Some blurb states these crossbars make the boat more rigid which may well be true. Constraining the sides (stopping them from flexing out as the boat bends longitudinally) will have some effect in overall stiffness.

As far as the preferred boats for touring, what is desirable is a decked boat the length of a Swing 2, but set up for a single paddler. That is the Framura aka ‘Swing EX’ to Innova – a good-looking, solo-touring, fixed-deck IK for those who think soloing in a Seawave is a bit much. 
Sure you can sit in the back of an SW2 and load the front, but it’s not right, is it? What are the actual benefits of a fixed deck on an IK? (the Swings’ decks unzip partially). Limiting swamping – sure. Keeping the sun off – maybe in sunny lands. Keeping you warm – I suppose so, but that’s what a dry suit ought to do: ‘dress for the swim [falling in], not the paddle [air temps]’ they say.
And many users complain that the zips are far from watertight. And so I conclude that the Swings may well be popular (actually I don’t think they were) but fall into the less desirable ‘bloat’ category: much wider than they need to be which is great for nervous day/rec users. But for the smaller niche of multi-day touring and sea use (space, speed, convenience), they’re not so ideal.

Another review • Some Swingers chat

Inflatable kayaks. Part 1: Fabrics and Fabrication

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