09-02-2019, 11:27 PM
Took my kids to a cabin on clinch river over the weekend. I had planned on taking them white water rafting, but I decided to take them to this place (River Place on the Clinch) instead. The rent out canoes and kayaks and inner tubes for a leisurely float down the calm river. I figured we would make a day of it. My kids have always loved to play in the water so I planned on drifting a while, swimming a while, paddling a while.
All they had available that fitted our needs were inflatable kayaks. There were three of us so we ended up with a two man and a single man. The single man kayak worked out fine, but the 2 man was a disaster. When you hit a rock with a hard shell kayak you can can slide over or off of it. But when you hit a rock with an inflatable kayak it sticks like velcro. The 2 man was much heavier and got stuck everytime we went through shallow shoals. It was very difficult to walk through the jagged rocks but dragging the kayak made it near impossible. There was much tripping and falling, and the rocks were sharp. My hands and shins are all torn up. And, of course it was difficult to even get in and out of the thing in the middle of the river. Halfway through the trip I broke my paddle while using it to push us off a rock. It was a 7 mile trip and the first 4 had lots of shallow spots. Once we got to the deeper water we did not have to get in and out of the boat and drag it along, but there was practically no current so we had to work hard to paddle home. What was supposed to be a calm float down the river turned into an extreme physical challenge.
White water rafting would have been 100 times easier.
These inflatable kayaks seems pretty stable, and would work great in lakes or deeper streams, but they sucked for where we were.
All they had available that fitted our needs were inflatable kayaks. There were three of us so we ended up with a two man and a single man. The single man kayak worked out fine, but the 2 man was a disaster. When you hit a rock with a hard shell kayak you can can slide over or off of it. But when you hit a rock with an inflatable kayak it sticks like velcro. The 2 man was much heavier and got stuck everytime we went through shallow shoals. It was very difficult to walk through the jagged rocks but dragging the kayak made it near impossible. There was much tripping and falling, and the rocks were sharp. My hands and shins are all torn up. And, of course it was difficult to even get in and out of the thing in the middle of the river. Halfway through the trip I broke my paddle while using it to push us off a rock. It was a 7 mile trip and the first 4 had lots of shallow spots. Once we got to the deeper water we did not have to get in and out of the boat and drag it along, but there was practically no current so we had to work hard to paddle home. What was supposed to be a calm float down the river turned into an extreme physical challenge.
White water rafting would have been 100 times easier.
These inflatable kayaks seems pretty stable, and would work great in lakes or deeper streams, but they sucked for where we were.
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