Kayaks, canoes and paddles
This category holds inflatable kayaks for two or three people, double-bladed carbon paddles and with them a paddle leash, rod holders and a pump. The length of the paddle does not follow from your height alone but above all from the beam of the kayak, because over a wide hull you have to reach further out to the water. A split shaft also lets you set the blades at an angle to each other, so that the raised one slices the wind instead of catching it. And the load capacity counts crew and gear together, so leave yourself a margin.
Kayaks, canoes and paddles
This category holds inflatable kayaks, double-bladed paddles and the gear that goes with them, namely a paddle leash, rod holders, tie-down straps and a pump. A kayak and a canoe differ in the seating and in the paddle, because in a kayak you sit low with your legs forward and take a paddle with two blades, while in a canoe you kneel or sit higher on a thwart and take one with a single blade. An inflatable kayak is made of two side tubes and a floor between them, and once inflated it holds the shape of a long narrow boat. Packed down it fits in a rucksack, so you carry it in the boot and need no roof bars.
The first thing is the paddle length by the beam of the kayak. The charts of the makers carry the beam of the boat down one side and the height of the paddler across the other, and only where the two meet do you get the length. A short paddle knocks against the sides of the deck and forces you to lean towards the pulling side, and a long one you place in the water far from the bow, so that you lose power and the boat wanders off course. Above sixty centimetres of beam you go up a step, so on a kayak seventy-eight centimetres wide reach rather for the top of the range from two hundred to two hundred and thirty centimetres.
The second is the angle between the blades, which any split shaft allows. The joint in the middle lets you set the two blades not in one plane but at an angle from zero to ninety degrees, with sixty the commonest choice. The point is that the raised blade then cuts the wind with its edge instead of catching it with its face, and into a headwind you feel that at once. Ninety degrees flat used to be the standard, only such a large twist of the wrist brought trouble in the tendons, and so it was left behind.
The third is the load capacity, which counts the gear too. The stated figure, that is a hundred and eighty, two hundred and ten or two hundred and fifty kilos, is the sum of crew, paddles, vests and everything else you take along. The closer you are to the maximum, the deeper the boat sits and the less freeboard is left, so that more water comes over the side and the boat turns worse. That is why about two thirds is the usual figure to plan with, and on rough water even less.
The last one is the stiff floor against the soft one. A soft floor gives way in the middle under the weight, so that part of every stroke goes into bending the boat instead of into headway. A reinforced floor holds the hull straight, so that the boat keeps its course better and at the same effort goes faster.