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| Pick a boat, any boat. |
Perhaps it is strange that there aren't too many kayakers still raving about the benefits of reindeer hide and whalebone kayaks, but the polar opposites on the continuum for paddlers are whether to place your backside in a boat made of fibreglass or roto-moulded plastic. There are of course pros and cons for either option, and staunch supporters who wouldn't dare to budge from their position.
Glass boats have a reputation for being smoother in the water and travelling faster than their plastic cousins, they are more rigid and often significantly lighter. Try offering, however, to drag a glass boat up the beach for your paddling partner and you risk sudden and immediate death.
Glass boats are somewhat fragile and a precious smooth gelcoat can be scratched easily and even punctured on rocks, coral or shark teeth. Promoters of glass boats will often tell you that fibreglass is easy to fix but I am yet to meet a single human being who enjoys breathing in acetone fumes or sanding back multiple layers of toxic goo.
By now you might have detected my preference for plastic boats. This is not a general rule, but for the Archipaddlo adventure a plastic boat will be better suited to our needs. Plastic boats are more flexible (not necessarily an advantage), they are heavier and they can be slower in the water. The main advantage of a plastic hull though, is that I can clumsily scrape my loaded boat across a coral reef at low tide (sorry Nemo) or across a sloppy mudflat without risking terminal failure.
Plastic is tough, durable and difficult to break or puncture. It is not as easy to fix as glass but usually there is no need. As much as I care about my gear I know there'll be plenty of times I'll be happy to slide my plastic boat straight up onto a coral cay, keeping my knobbly knees well out of the croc infested water around me.
Yep, on this occasion I'm happy to be wrapped in plastic!
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