Why Longboating Rules
It’s all about the glide. Long kayaks slide through the water much more easily providing a fluid and graceful ride.
Ocean surfboarding is a good analogy. Short boards are better at carving fast turns on steep waves. Long boards are more graceful. Each have their own place in the sport. The same is true of kayaking.
Advantages to Paddling a Long Boat
- They’re more graceful and provide a completely different sensation then short boats.
- You can carry much more speed. This enables you to hit lines that you can’t do in slower short boats. It also helps punching through holes.
- Its more fun to carve in and out of eddies in a long boat.
- The boofs are way sicker. Since you can go faster, you can get lots more air.
- It opens up new options in play boating. Long boats can catch waves you’d never be able to in a modern play boat. You can also launched way out of the water doing enders.
- It makes paddling class III fun again. If you’re a boater that’s sick of risking life and limb paddling class V, but is bored to tears on class III, longboating just might be the answer.
- It improves your general boating skills. If you can paddle a long boat, paddling a creek boat is a piece of cake.
- You get a better workout. Paddling fast in a long boat is great fun! You get your heart rate up and build muscle mass because being in a long boat makes you want to zip around all over the river.
- They're better for safety kayaking. Since there faster long boats are more effective getting to swimmers in emergencies. It's also easier to tow swimmers on the stern. By the way, playboats, in my opinion, are NOT appropriate for safety boating.
Disadvantages to Paddling a Long Boat
- They’re much harder to turn. This is why long boats are not commonly paddled now. It takes a special technique to paddle these boats which I cover in the tutorials.
- Safety is an issue: Long boats get pinned more easily. They frequently have small cockpits which makes them harder to get out of in an emergency. They’re older so the plastic or fiberglass on them is weaker.
- Nobody makes them any more. However, since they’re not popular, you can find them used for dirt cheap. If you keep your eyes open on Craigslist, you’ll probably find quite a few. I’ve accumulated about 14 long boats. Most of these cost me between $200 and $0.
If Short Boats Are Newer, Then Aren’t They Better?
In kayaking, the boat companies sell new designs by marketing them as “improvements” on older models and discontinue them. This isn’t always the case. Take the current batch of play boats out there. True, they’re awesome at doing aerial moves on huge world class surf waves, but they’re harder to surf on the small waves that the majority of boaters play on. The playboats that were out ten years ago were much better for the average boater on a class III play run. In this case, the boat companies are doing paddlers a disservice, but few complain because everyone’s caught up in the “newer is better” mindset.
It’s the same thing with long kayaks vs. short kayaks. One isn’t better than the other, they just do different things. If you want to paddle technical class V, then get a short creek boat. They’re great at that. If you want to have fun paddling class III, carving graceful turns and gliding through the water, then get a long boat.
The Goal Of Longboater.net
Going back to the surfboarding analogy, longboarding, even though it’s an older style of surfing, is viewed as a totally valid part of the sport. This is the goal of longboater.net, to make longboat kayaking, a valid part of kayaking.