You can get ready made Chinese PVC D-rings dirt cheap on eBay but genuine rubber hypalon D-rings (not plastic PVC claiming to work on hypalon) cost a lot for what they are. Once you factor in the price of two-part glue, it adds up, especially if you have a few to fit. It’s fairly easy to make your own D-rings for your IK to attach gear, thigh straps, footrest mounts and so on.
Heavy duty Grabner D-rings. €15 a shot!Half a square foot off-cut: £9
You can buy metal D-rings by the sack-load online, as well as round PVC or Hypalonpatches. (‘Hypalon’ is pretty much the same synthetic rubber as Gumotex Nitrilon and Grabner Nordel EDPM). Or buy an off-cut (above right) for much less and cut your own. A D-ring doesn’t have to be round but it’s better if corners are rounded. You will notice how unusually hard it is to cut this stuff with scissors or a blade. The fibre core is tough: needed for zero-elasticity in an IK.
Pictures below show how to make your own D-rings. Go to this page for how to apply any patch, step-by-step.
A small but thin 75mm round hypalon patch for light duty use. Cut a slot in the middle wide enough for the D-ring.Trim the smaller back-patch into an ‘8’ to fit the D-ring. Rounded corners are best.How it looks from the back.Ready for gluing.Glue drying on a batch on D-rings along with the two Grabner D-rings. On my single-side coated patches I glued coated green topside to uncoated grey underside of the round patch. When the glue is dry, carefully pass the D-ring through the slot then press down hard on the two surfaces with a tyre roller or in a vice.Finished D-rings recycling some old Semperit metal Ds. Not sure I’ll be opening a D-ring shop, but they do the job. See here for how to stick on.
Sticking to the Rules I needed to fit some tube-top D-rings to properly support a second backrest in my Sunny 2020. I found a stray, opened tin of Bostik 2402 two-part in my kit bag, but with an expiry date of 2009. Back then I only owned this original Sunny and looking it up, 2402 turned out to be for rubber boats. Perhaps I bought it more recently but didn’t notice the expiry date. In the tin the glue was still liquid and unseparated, but the little bottle of Bostik D-10 hardener had long since evaporated. Digging around, I also found an opened bottle of PolyMarine hardener. Comparing chemicals showed they both contained Diphenylmethanediisocyanate, one of the few words that’s too long for a Scrabble board. I mixed the wrong-brand hardener with the 11-year old glue 25: 1 and the bond looked as good as anything.
There are a lot of full or hybrid Dropstitch IKs coming out now, but Idaho-based Aire are sticking with traditional bloat technology with their 2020 Tributary Sawtooth upgrade which gets an extra two feet and ‘bold new graphics’, as they call it in motorbike world. Along with with NRS down the road and with whom they seem closely tied, they’re among the US’s more serious IK makers (both come from the rafting game). Before the Seawave came along I’d considered an Aire IK but was put off by: • Price (US-made models) • Excessive width • PVC shells with slow drying bladders • Self-bailing
In other words, as far from a high-end Gumboat as you can get. It was long-extinct Sears IKs who are said to have originally come up with the idea of ‘inner tubes‘ supporting a sewn or welded PVC shell in the early 80s. It works like a bicycle inner tube supports a tyre. Aire adopted the idea a few years later which may explain why this method is common in North America but unknown in Europe. The benefits of this type of assembly are primarily economic: quicker, less laborious assembly, although bankside repairs using sticky tape on the bladder are near-instant. As explained on the IK Construction page, the bladder system involves easier sewing or welding of the shell (all shown in this Aire promo video – stills below). No glues or solvents needed, unlike ‘tubeless’ Gumotex or Grabners. Aire spins this as ‘double layer’ but of course they are co-dependant: without one the other is useless. For a recreational packboat user, bladder boats have drying issues because inevitably water seeps in between the two layers and stays there. Owners often complain about this and certainly in a temperate climate like the UK, proper drying would be a pain. It’s a lot of extra faffing to clean and dry than a quick wipe of a tubeless boat. Being rot-free plastic, leaving an IK wet won’t ruin it, the worst might be some mildew or staining, but as with all outdoor gear, storing wet is bad form and may affect durability, especially around sewn seams. Whether heat-welded or sewn, the tough 1000D PVC hullcasing doesn’t have to be watertight. It’s just there to protect the much tinner AireCell bladder which is accessed (and repaired or replaced) via long zippers (see boat below) which is the main way water seeps in between the layers. Other downsides include grit getting in between the shell’s floor and bladder. All-round, it adds up to more maintenance than a tubeless IK which dries in minutes after a wipedown.
Hand sewingRF or Heat WeldingHeat welding
You’ll struggle to tell on Aire’s website, but this budget ‘Tributary-branded’ range is ‘imported’: a presumable euphemism for ‘China’. That’s a word that’s even more tiptoed around in packboating world than PVC which, in the US, requires a health warning (left) to be sold in California. As always, TheBoatPeople tell it like it is. They had a hand in designing the original 13-foot Sawtooth. US-design with cheaper Asian textiles and manufacture explains the reasonable pricing. It also explains the 1-year Tributary guarantee compared to the mammoth 10 years you’ll get on Idaho-assembled Aire-branded boats with urethane (not vinyl) bladders.
Numbers (with help from the reliable theboatpeople are said to be:
Don’t ask me to explain the hydrodynamics, but a longer boat in the water is a faster boat, providing it’s not ridiculously wide or high or made from concrete. Longer, narrower and lighter than Aire’s US-made $2000 Super Lynx, the 2020 Sawtooth’s length-by-width factor is a pretty good 5.53 – near identical to a Seawave. (Compare other LWF’s here).
Obviously rigidity has an influence on speed and response, but up to a point a thick PVC IK (like my old Incept) is innately stiffer than more pliable rubber-based fabrics like Nitrilon. This may explain why the Sawtooth need run only 2.5psi (0.17 bar) even in a 15-foot IK, while a Seawave runs 3.6 psi and a Grabner even more. Or perhaps the vinyl AireCell bladders (right) can only safely take that pressure?
No footrest is included even though one is needed to brace against for a good paddle stroke. But Aire IKs can have have over two dozen attachment points along their full lengths (left). So besides positioning the seat/s exactly where you want them, you can easily clip-in a bit of sawn-down plastic drainpipe, which anyway is better than the mushy inflatable footrests which come with other IKs. While you’re at it, thread in some thigh straps which further improve your connection to the boat for more efficient paddling, especially at sea and in rougher conditions.
Many Aire IKs have an unusual dropped floor (right), partly because it has to be thick to work as a self-bailer. This design also means it acts like a fat keel to help tracking while its buoyancy lifts the side tubes out of the water to produce less drag and so increase speed. The Sawtooth comes with a clip-on skeg (useful at sea) and the Boat People reckon the Sawtooth is one of the fastest IKs around.
The principle of drop-floor/high sides may work, but in a self-baling boat the floor has to be thick anyway sit you up high above the water level. That means you’re less stable unless the boat is extra wide, but the Sawtooth’s width is pretty good (certainly compared to the Super Lynx). I can see the value of self-bailing in a whitewater IK – I’d sooner have that than a deck. Not so sure in a touring IK. When heavily-loaded or two-up and passing through swell, the boat may fill from below with water. You’re getting soaked anyway, but that’s not really wanted. It’s the other thing Aire owners grumble about. Aire IKs are unknown outside the US and certainly in the UK, and although the numbers and the price of the Sawtooth are great, for the same $1370 in the US (2025), I’d sooner choose something else. Owners’ reviews (old model).
Darn. I put my Seawave on eBay to ‘test the water’ and it went within hours.
Still, it’s an excuse to show some of my favourite Seawave shots in five seasons of fantastic paddling. What a great boat that was. So great that, with nothing better available at the time, in October 2020 I bought another Seawave (left).
Venice lagoon; the only other Seawave I’ve ever seen. [Story]Early morning Swanage stacks. [Story]Lap of Hayling Island. Not as interesting as it looks. [Story]The far-flung wedge-skerry of Angus, outer Summer Isles. [Story]Tanera Beg, Summer Isles. [Story]Autumn sunrise on the way to Priest island. [Story]Limehouse Cut, London’s oldest canal (1769). [Story]Overgrown track to a lake in Sardinia.Grotto at Cala Luna, Sardinia. Our only wind-free day in a fortnight.WindPaddling around Coigach Peninsula [Story]Spring on the Medway, Kent. [Story]Short-lived MYO rudder experiment. [Story]
Kokopelli are a US packraft brand who started out in a Denver garage in 2012 but soon moved on to full Asian production. Known for their distinctive range of yellow TPU or PVC packrafts – long, short, bailing or decked, with the Moki I and Moki II they’ve moved into IKs. Both Mokis are what they’re calling hybrids: dropstitch floors with conventional side tubes. Warranty is a generous 3 years. As always here at IK&P, it’s the the two-seater’s added versatility as solo tourer that’s of interest. The online stats for the Moki II are:
Weight: 24kg (53lbs) • Full kit in bag 27kg (59.5lbs) ; boat with seats 21.5kg (47.4lbs) Length: 4.3m (14 feet) Width: 91cm (36″) • With deck (39″); no deck (38″) Sidetube ø: 21.8cm (8.6″) • 30.5cm (12″) Payload: 272kg (600lbs) Pressure: Sides 0.17bar (2.5psi) ; 0.27bar; DS floor (4 psi) • Set-up leaflet says: sides 3-4psi, floor 8-10psi Construction: 840D Nylon side sleeves for PVC bladders; 1000D PVC DS floor Price: U$ 999 (with tandem spraydeck); UK £950
Renting a Moki 2 a couple of months after this was written revealed several errors in the online specs. Only the length was spot on. The set up leaflet also refers to ‘… the packraft…’ a couple of times, as if it was hastily copied. Verified figures are in red above.
Big, 21.8cm nylon sidetubes house PVC bladders which take an above-average 2.5 psi (0.17 bar) while even the dropstitch floor (DS-F) only runs an oddly low 4.5psi. That’s about the same as my uprated Seawave or a similar, regular-tubed Grabner. Can a DS-F IK be too stiff? Possibly. Turns out official online data is wrong. As with many bladder boats and/or part or full DS IKs, weights tend to be higher and the Moki is more than most, but this may include all the extras, not least a huge roller duffle with backpack straps. The 24kg weight give may well add up to the boat with the deck and skirts.
According to Kokopelli, the Moki II is rated as ‘Lake’ but it’s also rated for ‘Fishing • Oceans • Travel’.
The well-featured EVA foam seats look a bit thin in the floor, but that’s easily altered and they can be positioned securely anywhere along twin velcro bands on the floor, with the backrests braced off the hull top in both directions. A lot of IKs have these bow and stern bungies which are handy to slip a paddle in while you fiddle with a camera, but you’d not want to use them for anything important or bulky. Not listed, but you can also use velcro tabs on the side tube tops to secure paddles. The specs claim there are a dozen D-rings but they are just the bungies being repeated. There are no D-rings in the boat. The foam rubber tube footrest/s can be repositioned in daisy chain loops, presumably sewn to the DS-F casing and there a huge, clip-on skeg (tracking fin) plus what looks like a shallow front keel to help the flat floor track straight.
The zip-on tandem zip-on deck with coaming rods and skirts come with the boat too (hatch length: 86cm, 34″); an optional solo deck is available. Plus you get a compact, two-way barrel pump and a repair kit. Add a paddle and some water and you’re all set.
At the listed three feet or 91.4cm, both Mokis are pretty wide as so many US-branded IKs are (one reviewer verified a Moki I at 37″ wide). See true figures above. But something looks wrong with the stated dimensions (left). If the internal width between the tubes is 14″ and the side tubes are 8.6″ each, the total is 32.2″, nearly 5″ narrower and about the same as my old Seawave. That’s more than wide enough to be stable but nippy. I asked Kokopelli; someone replied but never got back and the website remains unchanged. From the proportions of the images above, the actual length looks somewhere between the two. Discrepancies explained by verified measurements, above.
We paddled a Moki II for a couple of days. Review here.
Gumotex are moving on up with hybrid dropstitch technology, originally showcased in 2019’s Thaya which is basically an old Solar 3 with a DS floor to make it more stiff. The new-for-2020 Rush 1 and 2 (left) is quite a sophisticated advance on a DSF or hybrid IK. A couple of years later the Seawave got the DSF treatment and became the Seashine at not less than £2500.
The Rush models came out in April 2020, just as the pandemic hit and lockdowns, shutdowns and slowdowns spread across the world. It’s also said there was some kind of quality control calamity at the Gumotex factory which led to many completed boats getting shredded. As a result, stock of Gumotex IKs dried up at a time when post-first-lockdown IK demand went ballistic RTW. Other IKs gradually came back online, including other Gumotex models, but oddly, the all-new flagship Rush was put right to the back of the queue until 2023. I speculated this may have been a production issue and it seems I was right: I read in the PaddleVenture review comments: “There is actually a modification to the Gumotex Rush [for 2021]. The drop stitch area on the bow and stern elements is said to have been improved. Apparently there were more complaints here than usual, so that at the end of last summer no more Rush models were produced and this part of the boat was revised”. It’s not clear what the problems were, but it proves that making anything other than a flat, DS plank is tricky, but also that any boat which can get round this (like the Itiwit X500) will be superior. The Rushs were briefly back in stock in2021 by which time all Gumotex IKs received a massive price hike which killed demand. By 2025 the R2 was listed in the UK at £2250 but offered for £1999.
‘Hybrid’ is a cool word for a kayak which isn’t a Full DS like a Sea Eagle Razorlite and many others. These IKs are assembled from three flat dropstitch panels making boxy hulls which, according to the graphics on this page of the French Gumotex importer, can be sub-optimal in choppy waters. Me, I also think a totally flat, barge-like floor doesn’t help, but the Rushs get round this with raised side tubes which act more like stability pontoons, a bit like the Tributary Sawtooth. In addition you’ll see on the left the suggestion that tall, flat sides are more affected by waves and wind, which does seem plausible. Of course, if you only every intend to paddle flatwater on calm days, this doesn’t really matter.
Derived from iSuP boards, DS has become a blessing to IK floor design which hitherto had to use I-beams of parallel tubes (above) which complicates assembly and is prone to ruinous rupture if over-pressured, unless fitted with a PRV or the IK is exceptionally well made.
A Gumotex hybrid IK (below) retains the regular round side tubes of a classic IK for better secondary stability (afaiu) but features a DS floor for much-needed rigidity as boats get longer. However, unique to Gumo, DS end-panels are also used on the bow as well as shorter and less obvious panels at the stern.
A word about this fabric paraphrased from here: “Nitrilon-Dropstich is composed of a core of 1100 dtx polyester fabric made up of two sheets joined by a mass of threads exactly 10 cm long. Unlike regular PVC-based iSuPs and DS kayaks, the durable elastomer plastic coating is not glued to the fabric, but ‘pressure-impregnated’ which eliminates delamination risks more common with bonded PVC coatings. An additional layer of polyester-reinforced Nitrilon is vulcanised to the floor bottoms making them double thickness.”
The Rushs differ from the Thaya (1st gen Gumo DSF) with the panels forming a more ‘hydroformed’ bow, another weak point with regular blunt-nosed tubed IKs. The Rush’s bow makes a water-slicing wedge sharp enough to cut ripe avocados.
The vital stats on the tandem Rush 2 are said to be 4.2m long x 82cm wide. Compare that to my Seawave at 4.5 x 78cm; the Seawave has an 11% better length/width factor (LWF) of 5.77 vs 5.12 over the Rush 2, but those are my Seawave measurements. The side tubes are said to be 19/20cm on the Rush compared to 22 on my Seawave. This and the length may contribute to the load rating dropping to 195kg vs 250 on the longer Seawave. That’s still plenty, unless you’re hauling a moose carcass out of the Yukon. The official weight varies between 15.5 or 17kg, depending on where you look online. The higher figure is the same as my modified Seawave with a packraft seat mod.
Pressures are another obvious difference with the Seawave. The 6cm DS floor runs at 0.5bar(7.2psi), actually a modest level for DS, but an IK doesn’t need to be as stiff as a iSuP board. The slimmer side tubes run 0.25 bar or 3.75psi (same as the Seawave). Well, that’s according to the table from the online manual shown below. Many outlets still list 0.2 sides and so did the Gumotex website until I corrected them.
0.25 is a bit higher than normal IK pressure, but not quite as high as 0.3 in a Grabner, a Zelgear Spark or the 0.33 bar on my modified Seawave. When you combine that with the stiff DS floor, the 0.25 sides must make the Rush IKs Gumo’s stiffest IKs by far. The difference is, I added PRVs to my Seawave sides before running them at 50% higher pressure to automatically protect them. The Rushs don’t have any PRVs which explains the warning in the manual, above right. It’s odd but worth remembering that my super-stiff Grabner Amigo didn’t feature any PRVs either, not even in the floor. Quality of construction (gluing assembly) must have a lot to do with it.
When you add any colour you want as long as it’s black, you do wonder if no PRVs is a good idea, because in the sun black things get hotter, faster. Black may be great for Cockleshell saboteurs, not so good for visibility at sea and it kills photos stone dead. It’s true the Innova-branded Swings in North America have long had black hulls and no one complained. But they only run 0.2 bar so need help in stiffening up in the hot sun. They also have fixed decks in red. Many Grabner IKs are now made with black exteriors too (right). One assumes the Rush’s grey, lowish-psi floor will handle increased pressures from passive solar heating, especially as it’s in the water most of the time. But the black side tubes will get taught which becomes a nuisance to manage (or worry about), even if tubes/cylinders handle high pressures better than flat slabs. In fact, as you’ll see from the comments below and elsewhere, Gumotex have found black is not notably worse than red or green in absorbing solar heating and dangerously over-pressurising. And if you’re that worried it would be just as easy to install PRVs in the Rush side tubes, as it was on my Seawave.
Because a DS floor is flat, one imagines it will hinder effective tracking, despite having a skeg at the back. The flat hull will plane over the water and wander off to the sides like a packraft – the so-called ‘[windscreen] wiper-effect’.
So, similar to Sea Eagle‘s patented NeedleKnife Keel™ (left), Gumo added a more discrete ‘keel hump‘ under the bow (left) to compensate for the lack of old-style parallel I-beam floor tubes which added a directional element. You can see from the overhead image above that this keel hump is mirrored on the floor inside the boat, either by design or need. This protuberance makes a high-wear point on the IK in the shallows so it’s just as well the floor is double thickness Nitrilon, as mentioned above. It’s the same on any boat. On my Seawave I pre-emptively added a protective strake – a strip of hypalon – to the central tubed rib, though to be honest it never got much wear as I try and be careful. Mine was hardly worn in five years of mostly sea paddling.
Rushs can be fitted with optional decks (green on the R1, above, red on the R2, below), using the same velcro system as the Seawave, with those horribly bulky alloy spars (right) supporting the decking (surely a flexible rod like tentpole material wouldn’t be hard to make). I read on other reviews that they’ve greatly improved the coaming (hatch rim) so that spray skirts attach more securely. In the still on the right the footrest appears to be the usual rubbish black cushion adjusted by strap and seats can be moved to a variety of positions, too, but the other images show grey footrest tubes which are supposedly dropstitch – much better. Seats are now solid foam, but the base looks too thin and low to me. A stiff foam backrest (with side bracing straps) is good, but an inflatable seat base is much more comfortable to sit on because you can vary the pressure and so the height. Foam eventually loses its cushioning but an inflatable seat doesn’t need to be made of hefty hull-grade hypalon, as on other Gumo IKs (more in the vid below). But anyway, a seat is easily changed to suit your prefs. More on IK seats here.
The Rush 2 has slimmer sidetubes than a Seawave and does seem quite low. It may benefit more from a deck.
Below, a review of a Rush 1 by Austrian Steve. Can’t understand a word but some observations: I like his convertible Eckla Rolly trolley/cart/camp chair; also love the lovely long canoe chute at 20:40. Have to say though, I winced a bit at some boat dragging here and there. Do the right thing, Steve; it only weighs 12kg! Note also this shortish boat seemed to track pretty well without a skeg – the frontal keel-hump may be effective in leading it by the nose, after all. But in the comments Steve admits the stiff, flat floor slaps down hard on wave trains coming out of rapids and I suppose would be the same at sea. It’s a drawback of flat, raft-like DS floors. See this for an easily translatable written review also in German.
The rrp of a 2025 Rush1/Rush2 is now a £1599/2250 (with 10% discounts), plus decks going from £47v5 (solo; R2) and a rudder kit for £329, same as the Seawave unit.
As you can see, I have been comparing the Rush 2 with my Seawave and wondered if it might be time (or an excuse) to change. An unprecedented five years of ownership proves there’s nothing wrong with my Seawave [I sold my Seawave in May 2020 but bought another in October].
What are the benefits of a Rush 2? Black is not such an attractive or useful colour for a boat at sea. Neither is losing a foot in length or 50kg in payload over the Seawave. But less bulk? and 2-3 less kilos is appealing. On a river the greater nippiness from less length will have benefits, but for that I have a packraft. As for greater rigidity, it looks pretty good in this clip but my adapted HP Seawave was very good compared to the lower-pressure Gumboats, and it seems the speed (see below) is no greater, but the gliding effort is reduced. A Seawave with a DS floor – the Seashine (left) – appeared in 2023, now costing about 50% more than a regular Seawave.
I really want to go with you Really want to show you, Lord That it won’t take long, my Lord Hallelujah, Hare Rama….
Picked up while scanning the radio on the drive to Tonbridge, there were much worst earworms to be stuck with than George Harrison’s 1970 pop hymn.
I was on the water at Town Lock before 9am on a mid-September day set to hit 25. This was surely, absolutely, positively the very last day of summer. End of! But just after 9am something was wrong. The MRS was saggy and I knew why. Annoyingly, it tends to need a top-up a full 5 minutes in, not just by resting empty on the cold water as I get ready to hop in. I put it down to being a high-volume and thin-skinned boat which takes a while to cool down and lose a little pressure once on the water. Plus, because you sit in the middle – not the back like a normal packraft – you notice the hull sag-crease to either side and feel the flex-bobbing as you paddle. That is why the K-Pump I’d dismissed today is a good idea with the Nomad: it gives the MRS a darn good over-pump before putting in and avoids the need to do it again in a few minutes. I suppose another way would be liberally splashing the boat all over for a few minutes before final top off. Now as taut as a harp string, I set off into the low morning sun, passing trees still in full leaf but slowly losing their sheen. I know that feeling.
The Medway would ordinarily be a fun-to-do-once southern English river if it wasn’t for the half-dozen jaunty canoe chutes installed to bypass the locks and weirs without portaging. Another way of spicing it up is to race it in a K1 kayak little wider than your hips. The first such bloke shot past me annoying close, paddling so fast he was bobbing up and down like a dashboard doggie. Soon a few others followed, including a double which must have been 22 feet long, and a guy in a plywood Wenonah with a lightning-fast single-paddle switch.
On the walk to Town Lock I’d passed several bands of early-morning Mamils browsing and clacking outside Tonbridge High Street’s 525 coffee shops – a common Sunday-morning sighting these days. But it seems a sub-species has evolved out of the recreational lifestyle gene pool – Mamiks – steely-eyed K1 kayakers, competitive City types going hell-for-leather, a club burn-up belting past at what looked like double my speed. But it seems one thing these slender 18-foot training razors couldn’t do was shoot the lock chutes, even if it saved them minutes of cumbersome portaging taken at a trot. Presumably skimpy and unhinged rudders would snap off, or the pencil-thin boat would get crossed-up on exit and flip like a fish-farm salmon.
By mid-morning there were plenty of other regular paddlers on the Medway: SoTs, canoes (but no SUPs), all enjoying a sunny Sunday on the water. I even spotted two Medway firsts: a wild swimmer bobbing along, followed by a naturist wild swimmer tiptoeing down a bank and finally, another old couple in their brand-new retirement Sevy Riviera which looked uncharacteristically pert. My sweet lord, they’re all out today.
Sweat was dripping from my nose and the back-breeze helped, but I did seem to be going at a good old lick for a packraft. I also noticed that I was paddling like you’re supposed to. I spotted this bizarre development on my last outing: I was pushing forward with my high arm (‘press-ups’), less pulling the lower arm through the water (‘pull-ups’). I was informed of this technique (along with ‘lighthouse’ torso pivoting) years ago by a mate who did a 1:1 paddle-stroke course, but don’t know what’s suddenly brought it on. Maybe I’ve had a knock to the head. Up ahead it was time to line it up and sluice on down the side of Sluice Weir – the longest, steepest and sadly the last chute on this part of the Medway. I imagine it’s given many newbies a bit of a fright, but the light and buoyant Nomad sashayed off the end with a shrug. From here it was dogwater all the way to Yalding Tea Rooms where I caught up with a young SoT woman who’d left Town Lock just before me. Following her for a while, she was definitely flagging. I knew that feeling at around this distance too, but not today.
I never know how far this paddle is, or I forget as I circle, gape-mouthed round my gilded bowl. 12 miles? At least 3 hours then, so I thought I might catch the hourly 1.12 train from Yalding back to Tonbridge. But by half-eleven I was already upon Hampstead Lock (above), 11 miles according to the official map (below). Take out the breaks and that was a moving average of 5.5mph. Five years ago I thought 3.4 was good. I need to update my avatar. Not bad for a packing MAMIK then, and a great way to end the season.
Hare Rama, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna…
Afternote
Like many paddlers, when I get out of the boat I’m always careful to hold the lead and move slowly, in case I kick the very light boat away from the bank – an awkward situation if alone, especially on a Pacific island with a typhoon on the horizon. While the Nomad was dripping dry at Hampstead Lock, resting on the beam of the lock gate, a gust blew it into the lock. Bugger! Luckily, it landed right way up, but ten feet down, there was no way I could reach it. Luckily too, it was caught in an eddy caused by the sluicing and right by the wall, not drifting off towards Maidstone. This gave me time to think. I reassembled the paddle and, hanging right off the lock side and holding the blade by the tips of my fingers, was j u s t able to nudge the boat towards some slimy steps, just as a motor boat drew up to the lock, probably wondering ‘What the heck is this chap playing at?’ I’ve learned similar lessons with pitched but unweighted tents: beware the unseen gust; it blows for you.
After-afternote
During this gust-driven mini-drama, out of the corner of my eye I’d spotted some IK activity nearby; something grey and thin; something green and fat. Turned out it was man and boy heading out for a paddle in a Razorlite 393 and a Gumo Swingbot. I’ve not seen the drop-stitch Sea Eagle before (nor a Swing, tbh) and have to say I was impressed by the look of the SE – and not just because it was next to a dumpy Swing (not one of Gumotex’s finest IKs). Those wide footrests on the RL might well help brace it, as long as knees don’t get in the way. And it had what they call a good fit and finish, but then so it should for a grand. The bloke knew his Gumboats and that a few other brands produced DS IKs near-identical to the RL. He was very pleased with the fast Sea Eagle. I’m still not convinced by the flat floor but one day I’ll getI got to try one.
Ten minutes after a paddling away from a tranquil Swanage seafront bathed in a Turneresque light (above), we found ourselves battling a stiff breeze rolling off the Ballard Downs on the north edge of Swanage Bay. The odd whitecap scurried by, a sign that the IK Limit was not far away. This felt like more than the predicted 10mph northerly. We dug onward, and once tucked below the cliffs the pounding eased. The northerly was probably amplified as it rushed down the south slope of the Downs and hit the sea. We’d paddled through that turbid patch – a bit of a shock before breakfast. What would it be like once out in the open round Ballard Point? Mutiny was afoot.
“Let’s see how it is round the corner, then decide,” I informed the crew. “Aye aye, cap’n sir.”
We eased around the corner expecting the worst, but were greeted by a magical sight: a line of 200-foot high chalk cliffs receding to a distant group of stacks and pinnacles glowing in the soft morning light and all soothed by a gentle breeze.
It was only a mile from here to Handfast Point aka: Old Harry, passing several stacks, arches, caves and slots. Ever the goldfish in its bowl, I’d got distracted before looking up tide times, but judging by yesterday evening’s paddle around Brownsea Island in nearby Poole Harbour, it was a couple of hours into its southerly ebb. We arrived at Harry’s about mid-tide but with still just enough water to paddle through most of the arches as well as some narrow slots which were already running too fast to tackle against the flow (below). A bit of a tidal race swirled past the Point, but nothing dramatic.
I’ve been planning to do Swanage for years and it was even better than expected. It must have been packed out yesterday on the bank holiday, but today, before 9am we had the place to ourselves. It’s a fascinating geological formation and all the better explored from a paddleboat.
Lit by a rising sun and on the top half of the tide must be ideal timing for a visit here. All up, it was only a two-hour roundtrip from Swanage seafront and in similarly good conditions would be easily packraftable from the north off nearby Studland beach.
Hope to paddle this again, one time.PS: Little did I know that this summer 2019 paddle would be out last sea paddle in the Seawave. Not since my original Gumo Sunny on which I learned and did so much, have I owned an IK for so long and had such fun times. What a great boat that was.
The plan was simple. Put the IK in at Limehouse Basin where I finished up last week, and take an easy canal-paddle up around what are collectively known as the Bow Back Rivers threading through the Olympic Park, then portage over Three Mills Lock onto what becomes Bow Creek. Here, we’d ride its tight meanders on an ebbing tide down to the Thames at Trinity Wharf. Hard left and, keeping on the north bank (naughty), for what looks like an easy beach take-out at Lyle Park, a mile downstream.
Another possible east London paddle route.
The whole 8-mile run included just two locks to portage. Compare that to 13 locks and two closed tunnels for the similarly long Regents Canal I pack’ed last week. Things didn’t get off to a great start, but next day we were back and on the water before 8am. We set off up arrow-straight Limehouse Cut. Dating from 1770, it’s London’s oldest canal, built to evade the Lee River’s final twisting meanders on Bow Creek which we hoped to paddle on the wat back. (Very detailed history of this river). Two miles on, a thick mat of spongey duckweed backed up around Bow Creek Tidal Locks. Tendrils of weed caught on the paddles and flicked all over the boat. Bow Creek ebbs and flows right alongside the near-stagnant Limehouse Cut/Lee Navigation, but this was surely once a single river system. The River Lee’s (or Lea) source is in the hazy Chilterns of north Luton, and reaches the Thames via Bow Creek, 42 miles later. The Lee River Navigation is paddlable from at least Hereford (Mile 27.5). In England, a ‘navigation’ in fluvial terms means a public right of way for all craft, with a precedent going back centuries. Not all rivers in England are a navigation. This whole underused wasteland between Strafford and Hackney was massively redeveloped for the 2012 Olympics, including the two new tidal locks mentioned. Before that, on the spring tide you could paddle up Bow Creek all the way to Hackney Marshes for some fish and chips. But while great for towpath activities, it seems the developers behind the refurbished network of waterways and new bridges didn’t consider paddleboat access either side of the locks. Odd, seeing as it was the Oh Lympics and all.
Our first trial came at Carpenters Road Lock (booking required a week in advance). It has a unique radial design with gates lifting a bit like a bulldozer blade. The CRT is very proud of it. Even though it’s permitted, as a single kayak I wouldn’t expect to use this or any lock; portaging is always quicker. But I would expect it to be fairly easy to get out and portage around a lock, just as I did 13 times or more last week on the Regents Canal. Maybe I’m going soft, but clambering up a 12 feet of rungs set in the canal wall, hauling the boat up, and then carrying it half a kilometre to the next accessible put-in doesn’t encourage paddling. What next; the cliff climbing finale from Deliverance (right)?
Two miles downriver at Three Mills Lock, (which I read was closed for repairs) we had to get up an even-higher ladder jammed behind a derelict? barge. To access the tidal stretch downstream of the lock, the only way was another long wall ladder, but it was behind temporary barriers. I could have wandered on to the Channelsea River to look for an easier put in, but where it joined Bow Creek (right), a cable or pipe to the crane floated across the surface, blocking the way. On a wild river you portage as long as necessary, sometimes miles. But either side of a lock on an urban waterway, how far do you go?
To be fair I’d timed the tide all wrong. I thought (correctly) that mid-ebb could be a fast run on the Bow, but in my greed for speed I’d failed to appreciate that at the tidal extent (the lock and adjacent Three Mills Island, left, 3 hours before LW at Bow Creek mouth), mid-ebb has already gone shallow. You’d need ropes to get down to a boat. I suppose the easiest way to do Bow Creek is to paddle up with the tide and then let it take you back – this must be what local hardshellers do. With a packboat you can dodge such backtracking. But not here it seems. And whichever direction you do it, once you’re in Bow Creek, I don’t think it’s easy to get out of the high-walled channel. Our East London paddle occurred during a mini-heatwave with temperatures up in the mid-30s. What better place to be than on the water. But not in it: that morning the news reported a staggering three drownings yesterday, all on the Thames and all separate incidents. Lacking the hoped-for thrill of the Bow Creek finale, the route we took wasn’t so interesting from the water, though would be a nice walk or cycle if you’ve never seen the Olympic Park in real life. From the water, you see a lot of high rises or backs of factories or construction to make more of the former. Even with its dozen or more portages, I found the Regents Canal much more diverse and interesting.
Below, some pictures from our day out.
Limehouse Basin 7am.A week earlier, covered in duckweed.A normal-height floating jetty on the east side of the Basin. More of these needed upriver.Thick weed clogs Bow Docks which drop to tidal Bow Creek for the Thames. But there is no easy way to access Bow Creek from the bank. You must book the lock in advance.Three Mills Island complex – there’s been a tidal mill here since Saxon times they say. There’s a cafe.Under the Bow Flyover. The Lee is the notional boundary between the East End and East London. In some pubs it pays to know the difference. Aabout 1200 years ago in Alfred the Great’s time, it was the frontier between Danelaw (Vikings) and Wessex (Anglo Saxon England).Loads of building all around. London will be utterly brilliant when it’s finished.How deep is a canal, you ask? This deep, but often less on the sides.Belladonna and blackberries.Old Ford Lock (Lee River Nav) to the left. Just after, Hereford Union canal leads back west to the Regents Canal near Victoria Park. We follow the Swan right under the footbridge along the Old River Lea, passing below the stadium. Note the two different spellings of Lee/Lea, Ley being the original Medieval spelling. I realise that nearby Leyton + Leytonstone have the same derivation.Nesting heron.Carpenters Road Lock. How do you get up there? How indeed.Actually quite easy out of an open IK. Don’t drop the lead!We could have turned south here under this bridge and taken City Mills River back to the Lee River Nav just north of Three Mills Island and so back down to Limehouse (see map below). A closed loop with no locks which would be an OK canoe or even a SUP. You can rent Moo Canoes at Limehouse.Instead, we portage for 500 metres to the Waterworks River. A superb trolley surface.
9am – time for brekkie in a park before crossing the bridge. There are a couple of snack huts here.
Round the corner from the lock, yard-high put in on the west side of Waterworks River. Gate by the steps locked for no reason so down the ramp past a site entrance. Below the bridge is a short ladder and the gravel riverbed is only a few inches deep.
The Swan Highway Patrol.The famously elegant Mittal sculpture – and some twisted red thing on the right.Once a quick way to tart up old flats, cladding removal now in progress.You want your water bottle or what?Awkward and mucky take-out at Three Mills Lock. This is where your 3-metre lead comes in handy.Good thing with IKs: light and bouncy.I walked off for a recce all the way down to Bow Locks but found nowhere to put in – not even ladders. This spot above was about the easiest place, but still required clambering over fences to get to a walkway 9 feet above the bank scrub. With all the attendant construction and secretive film studios, you’d need to be quick to dodge the hi-viz jobsworths. This point is just north of the Three Mills complex where……you’d pass almost immediately under the Mill building. There’s a very shallow weir at low tides; maybe nothing at higher water.
View downstream on the bridge above that mill race. This is 3 hours before LW at Bow Creek mouth, but even at HW access is still awkward.
Reluctant to retrace the nearby Lee Nav back through the weed morass and down the Cut to Limehouse, I wipe off the duckweed and roll up.We set off for the hot two-mile walk back to Limehouse.Wouldn’t be an urban paddle without one of these!
Hypalon is a cool-sounding word and although not made anymore, has become a generic term for the similarly durable syntheticrubber-coated fabrics still in production, like Nordel and Nitrilon. Once upon a time all rafts and were made of hypalon, then less expensive Asian PVC came on the scene. More about IK fabrics.
The other day, while lashing the Seawave to a chopped-down trolley, the bag sagged under its own weight and rubbed on the sharp edge of the hard plastic wheels which wore through the pack and then the boat’s hull (left) ;-((
The trolley had worked fine with my UDB drybag in New Zealand (below left), but that was partly because you can fully inflate a UDB via its one-way oral valve, transforming it from saggy sack to firm travel sausage.
Ironically, just two days before I damaged my Seawave I’d snagged a BNWT Orlieb RS140 (right) on ebay. I’d been eyeing up this non-rigid wheeler duffle for a while as a versatile Seawave transporter plus a reliable on-water drybag/buoyancy aid. With a bag like this, an IK or whatever you got can be transported easily across any wheelable terrain, or carried as a holdall or on its backpack straps if you’re strong enough.
With enough practice applying D-rings, let along bike and moto punctures over the decades, I was confident I could do a bomb-proof repair on my Nitrilon Seawave. In a way, I was even a little chuffed that my 5-year old IK was earning its first battle scars. Plus, in my experience rubber-based IKs like Gumotex, NRS and Grabner glue more reliably than PVC boats. Shiny packraft TPU is even easier: you can just tape it, but packrafts are low-psi boats not normally inflated with mechanical pumps. My adapted Seawave side tubes run 4 or 5 psi.
Things you will need
Patch The right two-part glue (below left) Solvent (MEK, Toluene) and rag Sandpaper or abrasive foam sanding block (note: Toluene eats foam plastic sanding blocks) Masking tape Small brush or wipe-stick Tyre repair roller (right) Well ventilated space to do a good job
Two-part glue. It’s a faff, but worth it
Tyre roller – a great tool for secure bonding
STEP 1 • Match up a patch from your collection, ideally identical fabric. For a small hole extend the patch at least an inch.STEP 2 • Clean the punctured area and patch surface with solvent and wipe dry. This time all I had was brake cleaner spray, but ordered some toluene for next time.STEP 3 • Sand down the two surfaces and then clean and wipe again with solvent. Avoid touching these cleaned surfaces with your fingers.Some colour coming off is a good sign you’ve removed any sheen or patina.STEP 4 • Position the unglued patch and mask the perimeter with tape to avoid excess residue and to help with positioning. If the patch is not perfectly symmetrical (like above) mark it – but make it bold – I still got it wrong!STEP 5 • Mix up some two-part Hypalon (Nitrilon; EDPM) glue. It’s rare than one-part glue works as well, but Aquaseal has worked for me, gluing a skeg-patch to a Grabner.I found some mini brushlettes in my repair kit box – they must have come free with some glue.STEP 6 • Brush on the glue thinly to the two surfaces. With Polymarine you then to wait 30 mins for it to cure/dry, then apply another coat and wait till touch dry (5-10 mins). Here’s their full guide: http://www.polymarine.com/advice/hypalon-adhesive-how-to-repair-inflatable-boat-tubesYou can see I made typical errors: mixed up too much glue (but better too much than not enough)…… and applied too much glue on the patch…… but a just-right thin later on the hull.STEP 7 • With the deflated boat repair positioned on a firm surface like a hard floor or better still, draped over a wooden stool, carefully lay the glued patch over the damaged area…… then – STEP 8 • peel off the masking tape and ROLL DOWN HARD moving from one edge to the other and again at 90° and again diagonally with your Baltic pine-handled roller, making sure the edges have stuck down. It won’t hurt to roll again in 20 minutes and again after an hour to make sure the two parts have well and truly bonded till death do them part. And actually, only about 25% of the glue was wasted.In 12 hours the repair is cured and ought to last the life of the boat. Never do that trolley thing again!
It was only a mile from here to Handfast Point aka: Old Harry, passing several stacks, arches, caves and slots. Ever the goldfish in its bowl, I’d got distracted before looking up tide times, but judging by yesterday evening’s paddle around Brownsea Island in nearby Poole Harbour, it was a couple of hours into its southerly ebb. We arrived at Harry’s about mid-tide but with still just enough water to paddle through most of the arches as well as some 
Inflatable Kayaks & Packrafts 