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Sounds like a slightly different purpose. I think they're still doing stuff like that for racing kayaks, but all the basic whitewater kayaks I've seen around are 40 pounds of injection moulded plastic.


Ah, yes - the ones you can run over with your SUV w/o doing any permanent harm... Tried one once - felt very sluggish compared to my 9kg (20lb ?) IIRC they also ride a bit higher/more curved top compared to the slalom race kayaks (where you do just about anything to get under the posts...) Then there are the "downhill" kayaks - longer, heavier, higher, relatively more narrow... Very unstable IMO, but didn't paddle one very frequently - never thought the downhill stuff was any fun...

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I certainly wouldn't trust myself to paddle a carbon boat in whitewater, yet. My obstacle avoidance still isn't the best.


Heh, broke off the frontmost 4" (all solid) of my kayak once going down a about 3' drop and hitting just about the only rock there was... Had to do the second race with a stick taped to the front in order to comply with the minimum length Easy enought to fix with a bit of heavy gauge alu wire, glassfibre and resin though.
Patching scrapes (not holes) was a fairly frequent thing (go over with sandpaper, apply resin, apply household plastic cling film to make the resin smooth out and cut down on the post patch sanding...
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/Michael