Gumotex Solar 300/Solar 1 We bought a Solar 300 in 2006, mainly for the v-light and short g-friend. Weight is 11kg (25lbs), length is just over 3 metres (10 feet) and width is 71cm (28″). It’s not self-bailing like the similar looking Safari, but is a lot more stable than the original model Safari Mk1 I had (newer ones are said to be better).
They stopped the 300 ages ago; the originalTwists were the replacement. The 300 was tough little boat, even for my size of person, and especially with the improvements I made (see here). After nine years it still held air for weeks on end and never gave a single problem, I can’t see it ever wearing out and I hope the new owners enjoy it. Coming out of the longer IK, it feels much more nippy but without being tippy. G-friend took the Solar down the Tarn in 2007, and I used it again in 2010 alongside my new packraft and occasionally since then. As you can see, my mate Yves pictured below left also took quickly to the Solar, first time out in an IK.
Our trip down the Tarn Gorge proved it was no worse in white water than the Sunny, but of course it lacks the packing space for longer trips. With no WW experience at all, g-friend soon got the hang of it after a couple of early swims and even developed the feel for skeg-free paddling. It can be done, although I found one time on a Thames training run I wish I’d remembered the skeg as I just wanted to move fast and not bother about correcting finesse. As said elsewhere, with a skeg you can power on regardless.
At 1kg a full-coat Solar is pretty heavy when it comes to lugging it around on public transport for a day paddle, but once on the water it’s a great boat and is of course a lot faster than my packraft. In summer 2010 on the currentless Thames near Oxford and with a strong headwind, I managed 9 miles in 3 hours, including rests and a couple of locks, though after 5 hours of paddling I was pooped. Looking closely at the Solar while drying it out, I was struck how it’s built like a tough commercial raft so will last for many, many years, like all full-coat Gumboats. It still looked in great shape when I sold it in 2015 after I finally got round to greatly improving the seat and footrest and skeg, ideas which will work on many similar IKs. Details here.
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!
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.
Another calm day, another island paddled around; a quick one to Horse Island which I visited last year. On that occasion the two islands of Horse and the smaller Meall nan Gabhar were separated by a stony, seaweed-drapped causeway. Today, leaving Badentarbet beach 40 minutes after HW, I expected to paddle between the two. On the way out I noticed that the way I’d clipped the new backrest was not so good, so at Runha Dunan point (map left) I pulled over to try something less bad (right). I definitely need to come up with something better, and for the rest of the trip avoided leaning against the strap for fear of damaging the lugs. That may have contributed to the fatigue, if not actual low speeds (see below). Expensive but stout Grabner D-rings and an SoT backrest are on the way. At 2.7 miles out a wide channel separated Horse from its northern neighbour (left). In the absence of distracting wind and at today’s tide (3.6m, max can be 4.7) I wanted to see if I could detect any currents in places like this channel. Maybe not yet only 1.5 hours after HW, but by the time I closed the loop a flow – I imagined against me from east to west – ought to be noticeable. Down the inland side of the Horse I passed the small seal colony (left) we spotted on our way to Ullapool last year. And at around 70 minutes and 4 miles out I turned around the south end of Horse Island (left) and experienced the slight turbulence I expected, possibly as the tide flowed round the point against a rising southwest breeze. Up the outside of the Island I felt a bit exposed so pressed on against the chop and as I returned to the gap from the south side the back end of the kayak kicked out a bit. A ha, something’s happening two hours after high water, getting through the gap may be a struggle. I felt the nose of the boat pull off course unless I kept straight on against an imagined current. But as the speed graph shows, I was actually going faster than an hour 20 minutes earlier and the seaweed below wasn’t showing any signs of flow, so if anything it was a light current pushing the back around. All very confusing. Perhaps the ebbing tide backing out of Loch Broom around the island creates a back eddy through Horse Channel. The fifty-minute paddle back to the beach turned into quite a haul, but that’s the way I like it sometimes and somewhere on this stage the GPS’s trip log (if not the track log, left) recorded the magical 5 mph! All up, 8.1 miles in 2 hours 20 at a moving average of 3.5 mph. About 10% faster than my other solo trips over the last week to Lochinver and around Rubha Coigach, but as a training run and without a proper back rest, the effort wore me out. As for tides and tidal movements, for the moment I remain baffled.
The calm continued and with it the paddling. Today we tried the Grabner Amigo two-up around Tanera Beg island out of Old Dornie. I’d <a class="wp-gallery mceItem" style="color: #000000;" title="Summer Isles Overnighter camped on the island with Jon one time but have never been right round it. For some reason I assumed better the greater weight of me in the back and half-my-weight Mrs out front. But looking at the seating positions (image below right), back is quite far back and full frontal is only a little more forward than the solo position. So the heavier person out front centres the mass a little better on the boat which must be better for control and response.
We set off me in the back, but suggestions on improving the forward operator’s poor technique and asymmetric delivery led to discord and erratic progress, as the speed recordings below testify. To be fair the g is way out of practice and also hadn’t had two hard days of paddling to tone up. However, claims that her inability to paddle straight was due to my diet and general girthlyness in the stern will have to be settled in due course by BCU lawyers.
Meanwhile, in the narrower back it was a tight squeeze for my (allegedly fat) arse and soon my legs – like my ears – were going numb. I’d initially perched on a spare Gumotex thwart but that felt unstable. It was better sat on the floor, jammed in. In this position my feet were against the back of the gf, so there’s only just enough room for my legs. As we passed between the two Taneras where a fishing boat was checking pots, I spotted an easy portage over Eilean Fada Mor, an island between the two Taneras. It gave a bit of a short-cut, but more usefully a chance to restore circulation in my legs.
We swapped places here too, although one lean back on my new q/d back strap arrangement (left, a replacement for the alloy Grabner bar which bends too easily) broke the black plastic clip. I fed a spare krab through the seat strap and tied off the other end with some cord so that clip wouldn’t break too. I was expecting such issues and anyway, big karabiners are easier to use when swapping seats (see Grabner Mods). With the force on the Grabner rubber mounting lugs now coming from an unintended angle rather than directly back when using the seat bar, I’m trying to spread and articulate the loads with cord. But with only 3 square inches of contact, even if the lugs were factory glued, I feel I ought to glue on some 4.5-inch ø D-rings instead (as on the Solar; over 15 square inches of contact). Whether it’s just my clumsiness or all this weight I hear about, it’s clear that the strain on seat mounts is greater than I thought, especially with footrests to push back off. As it was, with no footrests in the full-forward position I couldn’t rest fully against the prototype back strap, but as I noticed before, proper paddling is much easier out front as the boat narrows towards the bow. That’s another thing with big, single sidetube IKs: they’re over wide for good paddling. As it happens, should I want a footrest tube I do have a D-ring glued on the front floor in about the right place.
Back to the story. We were now back in paddling harmony and heading into mare incognita, the southeast corner of Tanera Beg where I’d heard there was an arch. And there it was – a very nice one too that could be paddled right through (this was 90 mins after spring HW). Its exposed position made the roof deeply scalloped by storms and weathering, reminding me of the similarly carved limestone walls of northwest Australia’s Geikie Gorge which we packrafted a year or two back. Amazingly, out here on the ocean-side of the Summers there was barely a swell or a breeze to disturb our composure. Though an hour’s paddle away, Priest Island looked enticingly near. And from Priest it’s less than 5 miles to Mellon Udrigle beach at the top of Gruinard Bay on the south side of Loch Broom. Or from either Tanera island you can take a 10-mile loop south to Priest and back north via the smaller Eilean Dubh and a few other ‘Outer Summers’. One for the next calm day and a paddling chum for back up.
We felt like we were making good speed across the south side of Tanera Beg, although rarely got over 4mph. At the southeast corner was a huge cave – big enough to break the GPS signal. With a small window at the back this will become another full arch by around AD6565. This whole exposed side of the island has deeply weathered Torridon sandstone cliffs full of interestingly rounded cracks and fissures. Tanera Beg, like the bigger Mor has the same ‘waisted’ kidney shape presumably carved by the icecap along existing fault lines. Like mountain col, the ‘waists’ usually correspond with bays backed with a handy stony beach though flat camping needs a bit more of a walk. Had the Ice Age been a bit longer (or when the polar ice caps are gone) there’ll be a few more Summer Isles to go round.
We then paddled below the 20-m cliffs on the north edge of the island (left). On a stormy day they reflect the brunt of the swells and throw up plumes of white spray over the cliffs themselves which can be visible from the road, miles away. Today, all we had to worry about was the peak of the ebbing spring tide in an hour’s time. Who knows if it mattered, but I’d deliberately circumnavigated Tanera Beg clockwise so as not to be in the inter-island channel where the current ebbing against us might have been more noticeable.
Heading back to Old Dornie the speeds indeed seemed to drop, even though we were going as fast as possible in an effort to catch the weekly fish van down in Achiltibuie. At one point the kayak slowed right down as it passed over some unseen current or eddy thrown out by Isle Ristol. But that soon passed and with a quick turnaround in Old Dornie, it’ll be fresh local halibut for dinner. So, closely analysing the data in the speed graph it seems that two-up doesn’t make the Amigo much faster than solo after all – perhaps it’s the same with tandems? I suppose the additionally weighted hull can only be pushed through the water so fast and then an IK’s unsophisticated hydrodynamics come against a wall. Instead, two-up enables greater potential duration as the paddling load is shared – and let’s not overlook the companionable element of two in a boat, as long as everyone is sitting in the right place and on form.
I set off from Achnahaird thinking I’ve left it a bit late. I must get to Rubha Coigach – the northern prow of the Coigach peninsula – by 11.40 BST or my kayak will turn into a sea pumpkin and my paddle into a wicker broomstick.
I was reversing Route #25 from the Scottish Sea Kayaking guidebook, a ‘Grade B’, (C being the hardest). And although spring tides were kicking off next day, the forecast was for very light winds and a warm sunny day; a good day to try and ‘turn the point’. Knowing that capes and headlands can be hairy places, I’d given this local ‘Cape Wrath’ a wide berth, but current conditions could not have been more benign. So for once I RTFM closely and decoded the perplexing tidal calculations of when not to be seen dead in a bloat at Rubha Coigach, the headland of Rubha Mor. The red period started at 11.40 which didn’t quite make sense in respect to slack water, but tidemaster and experienced NW Scottish sea kayaker Gael confirmed my calcs. I wasn’t going to argue.
It’s about 3.5 miles from Achnahaird northwest to the tip, and as I paddled along I tried to visualise possible scenarios. What unpredicted Corrywrecken-like horrors awaited me up there if I strayed into the red zone and got caught in a frothing maelstrom of lashing foam and bruised fish? A north-easterly breeze pressed in from the right and a gentle swell lifted the boat pleasantly. Up ahead white foam was periodically slapped off low rocky shelves, but it was nothing I couldn’t handle, and it was easy enough to turn back. I neared the jumbled cliffs which we’d walked to a few weeks earlier (some pics here from then), knowing that whatever it’s like now, it’ll be different once I got round the corner. And I was right.
On turning Rubha Coigach the chop dropped right away and I entered a windless Caribbean calm, divided by a hazy line far to the west blurring sea from sky. Lined up along a ledge to my left, a welcoming committee of seabirds nodded approvingly then waved me on with oily wings, pointing insistently at their watches. You don’t want to be here at 16.36 tomorrow, sunshine.
I could afford to take my foot off the pedal now, but cut across Faochag Bay anyway; up ahead what I thought was a cluster of bobbing gannets miraged into a party of a dozen sea kayaks (left), presumably being guided round to Achnahaird by one of the local outfitters. That was more kayakers than I’d seen here in six weeks or more. The amazing weekend weather had brought them all out likes midges.
Like yesterday across Enard Bay, the land kept what breeze there was off the sea making a surface as smooth as polished bronze. Beneath that, at least half a dozen varieties of jellyfish morphed and drifted weightlessly like organic spaceships. I’d never seen so many here; do jellyfish spawn? I was intending to keep going after Reiff where Route #25 started, so before I got there I turned in at Camas Eilean Ghilais bay and an unknown sandy beach. Unfortunately, a lone sunbathing couple sent out bad vibes, so knowing that feeling, I moved on following a quick look around. There were plenty more secluded spots I could reach that most couldn’t.
Just south of here are some crags popular with rock climbers and a few were out today. I also knew this was a great place to watch Atlantic storms beating against the same cliffs (left), although today was as calm as an atoll. The low reefs at Reiff which the SSK guidebook warned about were easy to miss and the sandy seabed off Reiff beach itself (below) maintained the tropical theme.
I was hoping to get up the tidal channel that led under the bridge into the Loch of Reiff. The loch holds water once the tide drops and I’ve been on the bridge at a spring tide with the water rushing in to top up the loch, making a fun-looking horizontal version of a Medway chute. But today I needed at least two more metres of water to get into the loch; a portage looked like too much work.
Just as I was thinking I must come back to shoot the chute in the packraft, one of the R-clips holding the Amigo’s backrest bar in place gave way and fell in the drink. So after lunch I wandered up to a sheep fence and broke off a bit of stray wire to replace the missing pin. That Grabner seat bar is reaching the end of its probation. I suppose the problem is I inadvertently treat it like a fabric IK seat, leaning back to pull out the thigh straps or adjust the seat base. Doing so bends the bar slightly and alloy can only be bent back so many times. Rigid objects attached to an IK (including a skeg) don’t work so well. I’ve a strap-based alternative in the works which will doubtless appear on the Grabner Mods page.
I trickled on down the unknown shoreline from Reiff to Althandu, nosing into geos crammed with yet more jellyfish, and then headed across to Old Dornie harbour. Other IK-ers and canoes were fanning out from the campsite, enjoying the sunny weekend, but by the time I got into the harbour with 10 miles behind me I was beginning to feel it. Over a forgotten Snickers bar I pondered over heading out to the Summers for a look around.
The breeze had now turned to the southwest, running with the incoming tide although it was still flat enough to roam. I headed out towards Tanera Beg, but about halfway across admitted that the anticipated sugar rush wasn’t happening. I’d had a great day out, ticked off the feared headland and found some nice places to revisit, so headed for Badentarbet. As I did so I noticed the occasional 10mph gust was pushing the back round; not quite enough to require double ‘correcting’ stroke, but noticeable. Add some swell, waves and more wind and the stern would get pushed offline for sure, but then that’s IKs for you. Not a suitable craft for very windy conditions at sea, although a deeper skeg (old-style Gumotex) and a full payload might minimise this weathercocking. To make up for my sloth and with a Cadbury’s power surge coming on, I had nothing to lose by hammering away at the last half mile, hoping to crack the 5 mph barrier. But that wasn’t happening either; 4.9 was the best I could wrench from my strangled paddles. Today’s tally: 13.1 miles in about 5 hours and a moving average of 3.2 mph. On the beach I hauled the Grabner over to the freshwater pool for a rinse and called in the taxi.
The heatwave which we hear has been tormenting the southerners finally crept onto the Coigach last weekend, like an overdue dog looking for its dinner. Warm, sunny and no wind. Hallelui-yay!
I planned to diligently hug the coast east round to Polly Bay were the Polly river drained Sionasgaig Loch, a fun stage which I packrafted last year. But once I actually got out on the water Green Island looked a doable 2km across mackerel-infested water rippled by an easterly breeze, so I took the direct line with wavelets slapping at my boat.
This was my first long solo run in the Amigo and initially, the usual neuroses bobbed to the surface: ‘must get a paddle leash’; ‘what if fish farm toxins have caused mackerel to mutate into piranhas’… and so on. In fact, the biggest problem was the heat. I’d put in already dripping from the walk to the beach and would stay like that for most of the day. They’d forecast a pleasant 21 but I’d guess it got well over 25.
By the time I pulled alongside Green Island I’d calmed down enough to spare time for a quick look around. Finding a place to get out elegantly without slithering across a web of slimy boulder-covered seaweed was tricky, so I jammed the Amigo up a barnacle-covered slot and stumbled ashore.
These tiny, uninhabited and unsheeped islands preserve a unique ecology, or at least a distinct botany that makes them look different to the mainland. I climbed over the sooty lichen rocks into the sweeping grass and wildflowers, causing an avian scramble, and a few minutes later planted a footprint on the 20-metre summit. I looked all around and as before, imagine Newfoundland was like this, a wild, windswept panorama under a pale northern sky with a surrounding coastline ground down by long-extinct ice caps. To the east was a sandy beach at Polly Bay – one for next time – with Suilven rising behind. In the other direction was Rubha Coigach which I was also eyeing up as a paddle during this calm spell. Heading back to the boat (‘what if it’s drifted off…?’) I came across a lone pink Croc flung into the grass during an especially violent winter storm.
I headed for the mainland, squeezing between an islet to what looked like a dormant fish farm above Rubha Phollaidgh (‘Dun’ on the map). We’d cycled to this point a couple of weeks ago, following the private road past Inverpolly Lodge which controls the freshwater loch fishing around here. Pushbiking seemed safely innocuous, but you’re never quite sure if some irate ghillie in a tartan strop will come after you. I’ve read of kayakers getting aggro for trying to put in at that bay.
As I left the bay something felt wrong, had I caught some weed in the skeg, was the boat going flat or a current suddenly against me? There was no sensation of speed as I clawed at the water although I was moving. I checked the GPS – 4mph, good enough. It seems the 4mph breeze was now directly behind me and I was paddling in a bubble of perfectly still air – never noticed that before. I became uncomfortably hot and soon began pouring with sweat; the insulating pfd didn’t help. On a day like today adapting the pfd to hold a 2-litre bladder loaded with Nuun tablets was a good idea, but it reminded me how much more satisfying it always felt paddling into a wind, even if you weren’t going so fast.
The single-track WMR comes right down to the sea at a bay known as Loch an Eisg Brachaigh. When driving or cycling by I’d long wanted an excuse to splash a paddle around here; it looked like a magical sheltered place. From the south the map showed a short cut into the bay over an isthmus linking the tidal isle of Rubha Bhrocaire. Had I arrived at high water I might just have scraped over with a few inches to spare. As it was, my timing was right off, but a wee portage (right) is always good for the legs and the bladder.
I plopped around the bay’s islets, scaring a seal that may have been a glistening mermaid just moments earlier. I seemed to be making better time than expected, too. Closer to the shore I was in the lee of the breeze and gliding over a flat calm. But it sure was hot and my eyes were permanently stinging with sweat which I presumed a sea wash would do little to alleviate. North of here the rocky, cove-riddled shore lead round to another deep inlet; the hamlet of Inverkirkaig on the WMR. A short, steep river ends here, running off Fionn Loch below Suilven and another great packrafting excursion, although the river itself seems usually too boney to packraft for more than a short distance.
Less than two-and-a-half hours from Garvie, I paddled in at low water where I found it was too much of an ankle-twisting bother to get to the distant shore and a bench. All around was manky seaweed so I satisfied myself with a desalinating rinse in the estuary and headed back out for lunch on a sandy beach on the north side. Refuelled, I decided sod this pfd, I’m as likely to drown in my own sweat and the RNLI would be stretched to the limit on a day like today. So I stripped off and cooled right down. At the rate I was going I was looking good to meet the Mrs passing through Lochinver at 3pm and turned Kirkaig Point for the final 2.5 miles into Lochinver seafront.
On the way in I got a striking view of Quinaig mountain (on the left) which rises over 800m like the rim of a crater behind Lochinver town. (A couple of days later we walked the three summits of Quinaig – definitely one of the best of the Assynt mountains.) And south of that was the reliable dome of Suilven behind Strathan hamlet, also a great climb as is well known. Past the harbour and marina and the baronial Victorian edifice of the Culag Hotel which had the misfortune to have an ugly fish factory built right in front of it. There are more nice old pics of Lochinver here.
So there we have it. Calm conditions or perhaps a pessimistic estimate meant I got to Lochinver at 2.10, just 4.5 hours from put in. The GPS logged 3.5 paddling hours and a 3.1 mph moving average over 11 miles. Peak speed was an unnoticed 4.6 coming in with the tide into Lochinver. In fact that compares well with the only other long run I’ve done here: Ullapool run, though that was into the wind at times and clocked up 15 miles.
Conditions this time couldn’t have been easier; it’s so often windy up here compared to just 60 miles down the coast in the vicinity of Skye. I felt like I could have paddled any open crossing that day and so Enard Bay proved a bit of an anticlimax. The Amigo didn’t feel especially slow or tiring to paddle just because it’s not a K40, and so now I have a better idea of what the Grabner can manage in a day.
Paddling a Grabner H2 through Burano, a Venice-like collection of islands and canals (right) about 8km northeast of Venice itself.
Wiki says: Burano is also known for its small, brightly painted houses… The colours … follow a specific system originating from the golden age of its development; if someone wishes to paint their home, [they] must send a request to the government, who will respond by making notice of the certain colours permitted for that lot.
A couple of years ago I did a speed test on my then-new Incept K40 over three and a bit miles from Old Dornie to Badentarbet beach via Tanera Mor island.
I recall setting out flat-out on a cool, calm evening, cruising hard close to 5mph at times, with a burst after a rest up to 5.2, after which my energy levels tailed right off because I was well and truly pooped. I recently decided to replicate that route in similarly calm conditions and see how my new Grabner compared.
Prior to that we were out yesterday in windier and choppier conditions when, with a 10-15mph back wind I averaged about 4mph with a burst up to 5.3. Coming back into the wind we decided to try the Amigo two-up, as it only requires the front backrest moving forward. Towing the Solar together we managed a steady and sustainable 3mph with a burst of 3.8 into the stiff breeze. And on a quick spell downwind we got up to 4.8mph. It’ll be interesting to see what we can manage two-up when not towing a kayak
Though twice the weight of the g’f, I sat in the front and got pretty wet from the chop, but up here found the Amigo’s narrowed beam and lack of annoying finger-snagging seat lugs made paddling easier, even without a footrest to brace off. We seemed to clash paddles less than the last time we did two-up in the Sunny on the Vezere in France. Perhaps there’s more space between the seats in the Amigo even though it’s overall 10cm shorter than a Sunny.
As it happens once back on the beach, a French couple in a motorhome were drying off their Gumotex Solar 410C. They’d also been put off from exploring the Summer Isles by the offshore wind. They set out this morning and I see that the two seats do look quite close (ropey photo at max zoom on the right). I mention this because, as a reminder, I rate my discontinued Grabner Amigo as very similar to Gumo’s Solar 410C (see table below). Main difference is more pressure in my Amigo make it a stiffer and probably faster boat – but at twice the price of the Solar while you can still buy it. Back to the speed comparison test. Today was a calm day with a light wind from the southwest and when I set off the tide just beginning to ebb.
I’m getting accustomed to the thigh straps and the homemade footrest is great. Pulling inwards with the knees to brace off the straps and so transmit more power in the stroke isn’t something I could do for too long, I decided. I think the straps are more useful for last-ditch bracing against tipping in rough seas or rapids. But even then, allied with the footrest they do help connect you as well as you can be in an open-decked IK. Yesterday I’d found the backrest made my back hurt, perhaps because I have those footrests to push off. I’m still not convinced by this rigid backrest arrangement anyway. The cut-down packraft seat is fine (while it lasts) but that bar keeps disengaging from the rubber lugs (since fixed) and I think I’ve already bent it just be leaning too hard while moving about. It won’t be too hard to either get a thicker-gauge backrest bar made or dispense with it altogether and fit something like an Incept blow-up seat using the current lugs (although I see from what I thought here that maybe that’s not the answer). And as mentioned, those forward lugs painfully snag my fingers every once in a while.
Anyway, with barely a break I belted across to Tanera as fast as I could, leaning on a bit of karrimat taped to the seat back which did the trick. I averaged just under 4mph where the Incept had managed about 4.6. That’s also the top speed I clocked in a flat-out burst in the Grabner just before reaching the island, although on both occasions this sort of effort was not sustainable.
On the second leg back to the beach I had a light wind behind me but as I neared the pier I thought I could feel the pull of the outgoing tide. Unlike in the Incept, my energy and speed didn’t drop off much as I approached the beach and I got across at what felt like an all-day sustainable 3.8, with some spells recorded at up to 4.5mph without trying.
What the heck does it all mean? Well, it’s the not-so-startling revelation that the slimmer and two-foot longer Incept K40 was indeed a faster IK than the Grabner (two tracks overlaid on the left). Overall the Grabner is around 20% slower than the Incept.
At times at sea or on near-still rivers I do feel like I’m pushing the wide-nosed Grabner like a packraft. That’s another benefit of twin-side tubes, I now realise: a sharper bow is formed, as found on Grabner’s Holiday models too. On the right you can see that’s more plough than bow and must add up to a more effort over a long day, limiting compatibility with hard-shells for full-day runs like this.
And look at that wake I recall forming a similar conjecture (picture) about how the Sunny ruffled the water when compared to a hardshell’s sculpted bow. Or indeed look again at the Incept’s moderate wake at the top of the page. But then this is all for flatwater operations. In a swift river like those of the <a class="wp-gallery mceItem" style="color: #000000;" title="Kayaking and packrafting in southern France Massif I’m sure the shorter Amigo will be easier to handle than a K40 and so the compromise stands. It’s just that up here the best paddling is in the sea. Surprisingly I don’t miss the Incept’s rudder, having spent years in skeg-only IKs before getting the Incept.
Guess what! I got my Mini K-Pump the other day (left, 600g in the bag; ~$73) and gave it a go, topping up the Amigo at Old Dornie. The fat, 15-inch pump easily banged in the required psi into the floor, but getting to the side chamber valves wasn’t so easy (below). That required the angled nozzle supplied in the kit. Before I got a chance to fit that, the plunger or piston inside the housing got knocked off the shaft. Without a crosshead screwdriver I couldn’t fix that, but luckily I had the barrel pump at hand, so we achieved operational pressures in the end.
A quick reply from K-Pump apologised for the lack of adequate gluing on the plunger. With all the grease around the seal and the plunger / piston, I decided it was less work to fix the plunger to the shaft (right) with a couple of self tappers, rather than glue. Don’t know what I’m on about? Never mind ;-)
My very cheap Bravo two-way R.E.D ‘kite pump (left) is much faster at effortlessly inflating a rolled up IK out of the bag, but is of course too bulky to take on a plane. With the angle nozzle (right), the K-Pump Mini is a much handier and more compact top-up pump: I estimate it takes less than ten pumps to top up a chamber; about twice as many as the bulky Bravo kite pump. And I’ve since found it can inflate my Gumotex Seawave from flat in about 15 minutes (picture below, in Venice). Years later, it’s still my back-up or top up pump, especially handy on my Seawave which had PRVs all round and so would purge, and also to get bigger packrafts like the Nomad S1 over lung pressure to make them good and taught.
It’s hard to buy a K-Pump in the UK and I’m not sure there is anything similar. A Decathlon 1.4L D/A barrel is not that much bigger, easy to buy and just 15 quid.
Pankanel in Greece has this to say: I would also like to comment on the K-Pump Mini. I was looking for something compact and bought it from an online shop in Poland. When I first saw it, I was disappointed. It looked small for the job. Like a very fat version of my bike pump. But when I used it I wasastonished. Side by side, it inflates the boat as fast as my high-pressure Bravo foot pump or an electric Bravo foot pump. Using an extension I made using a little garden hose, some duct tape, and three of the included adaptors (vinyl tubing, Boston adaptor, universal adaptor), I can now inflate the boat very fast, standing up, or even in the water. It is the best pump I have ever seen. I Imagine the bigger models will do miracles.
Inflatable Kayaks & Packrafts 