{"id":926,"date":"2011-07-06T18:44:11","date_gmt":"2011-07-06T23:44:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thechristys.net\/?p=926"},"modified":"2011-07-06T18:44:11","modified_gmt":"2011-07-06T23:44:11","slug":"kayak-learning-curve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thechristys.net\/?p=926","title":{"rendered":"Kayak learning curve"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Our kayaking adventure continues.\u00a0 As some of you know, I purchased a used kayak a couple of weeks back.\u00a0 I got a Malibu X-Factor.\u00a0 Malibu is a company known for making “big boy” kayaks.\u00a0 They tend to be “robust”.\u00a0 What they lack in speed they make up for with stability and when fat people sit on them they don’t usually sink them.\u00a0 It was my kind of kayak.\u00a0 And it was cheap.\u00a0 It was been damaged and the guy I bought it from repaired it.\u00a0 It looked ok to me but what did I know?<\/p>\n

Another good thing about this transaction was all the extra stuff.\u00a0 When you buy a new kayak you usually get a big piece of floating plastic with cool nooks and crannies.\u00a0 You quickly figure out you are not going far without a paddle (you know what they say about being up the creek) so put one of those in your shopping cart.\u00a0 You also learn in about 12 seconds that you don’t want to sit in\/on your plastic ship without a little padding and some back support, toss a seat into the shopping cart.\u00a0 Perhaps you may want to stay in one place for more than a few seconds, add an anchor to the list.\u00a0 You probably should attach that anchor to something – anchor line, that will work better.\u00a0 It doesn’t take an ancient mariner with a sextant to see where this is going.\u00a0 All this stuff and more was included in my acquisition.<\/p>\n

I did have to buy some kind of carrier.\u00a0 It’s not easy to heft a 14.5 foot long 85lb boat over your head and on to the top of your giant Texas SUV.\u00a0 I got me some Malone SeaWings and a Stinger, now it is possible although still difficult when you have noodle arms after paddeling all day.\u00a0 I dream of getting a trailer some day.\u00a0 Our first outing was a success, kayak was loaded, unloaded, launched, mounted, paddled, reloaded, unloaded and fish were caught somewhere in between.\u00a0 There was more water in the hull then expected but the ocean was choppy and how did I know what to expect anyway?<\/p>\n

Our second trip was over the holiday weekend.\u00a0 We went to Galveston Island State Park.\u00a0 It’s a real nice place.\u00a0 We hang out on the bay side.\u00a0 More loading\/unloading\/paddling\/fishing and then . . . . my not so silent partner took to the seas – look at her go!\u00a0 After deftly mastering the rudder and working out the whole left, right, left, right paddle thing she was cruising the lagoon.\u00a0 She did quite well and said she would even consider going with me in a 2nd kayak some time (one with a motor in it).<\/p>\n

On our return home it was obvious that there was too much water in the hull even to our untrained eye.\u00a0 On closer examination I found that the repaired portion of the boat was no longer repaired, it reminded me of the SS Minnow.\u00a0 After much hand-ringing and some crazy ideas involving expanding foam we took the boat to Austin Kayak in SW Houston.\u00a0 They said they can fix it, they have it now, I am hoping for the best.<\/p>\n

So everything didn’t turn out exactly as I hoped, but I am still glad I got a kayak, I think it is going to cut into my motor boating.\u00a0 They should be able to fix my fat <\/del>big boy yak for a $120 or so and if that is the case, I still fell like I am coming out on top.\u00a0 I recommend you give it a try!\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our kayaking adventure continues. As some of you know, I purchased a used kayak a couple of weeks back. I got a Malibu X-Factor. Malibu is a company known for making “big boy” kayaks. They tend to be “robust”. What they lack in speed they make up for with stability and when fat people sit […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[26,27],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thechristys.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/926"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thechristys.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thechristys.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thechristys.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thechristys.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=926"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thechristys.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/926\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":931,"href":"https:\/\/thechristys.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/926\/revisions\/931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thechristys.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thechristys.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thechristys.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}