Kayak Adventures

Our Hurricane Kayaks are very responsible for making our kayak adventures more fun. By following our journey, you already know that we really love kayaking. We promised to and are taking our kayaks to places that Hurricane Kayaks have never been before.

I can say this with confidence because some of our next stops are extremely remote. Don’t be surprised if there is no blog next week. No internet for more than a week is a very real possibility.

Starting in Key West on January 1st this year we have gone all the way across the United States. This report is about our kayak adventures in eastern Washington. Yes, we are headed to the Puget Sound and the San Juan Islands making our transcontinental crossing complete. Before the onset of winter, we will be in San Diego. Next year we are starting to plan some kayak adventures in Alaska.

Weather

Starting In Boise the weather turned nice enough for time on the water. Our first serious water time was in Washington. You can tell from our last post that the weather in northwest Oregon was a little cold so we didn’t kayak. Instead, we dreamed of better weather and summer. Summer is just around the corner. After these hopes, we would then have a cold snap. We never saw spring.because we were too far north.

Florida

We had some real kayak adventures in Florida. Our kayak adventures in Florida included crystal clear spring water and alligators. Last winter we set the tone for the kayak adventures described in this post. Hunting Crocs and Gators

Then we had more kayak adventures in Key West. This post has a great picture of kayaking through the mangrove swamps. The trails through the mangrove trees were so tight that we couldn’t swing a paddle. Key West Wildlife

Without trying to be tedious, these following posts have more kayak adventure photos where we were paddling with alligators.

Deep in the Everglades : Middle of the Swamp : Big (bad) Cypress Swamp

What makes our Hurricane Kayaks better?

By visiting some of the above posts you can see that our kayak adventures before we got to the Everglades, were made in our previous boats. The biggest difference between our older boats and our new Hurricane Kayaks is weight. Compared to our new kayaks, our older boats were very heavy.

Our new Hurricane Kayaks are much lighter and faster. They also have a much better design than our old boats. The weight difference is obvious whether you are taking them off the car or carrying them to the water and even when you are on the water.

Faster = easier

Our new Hurricane Kayaks are also much easier to paddle than our old boats. You could describe the term easier as faster. We are not interested in speed but for a given amount of work, our boats glide through the water much further with much less effort. Compared to our new Hurricane Kayaks, Tami’s old kayak was like paddling a flat bottom barge. How this efficiency plays out is that we are able to paddle further with less effort.

More comfort

Another reason that we can paddle much further is comfort. In our new Hurricane Kayaks, we have sling seats similar to camping chairs. I have been paddling kayaks, all kinds of kayaks, for fifty years. Our new Hurricane Kayaks have the most comfortable seats and are much better than any of my previous boats.

The Snake River

As I mentioned in the post Across Idaho we have been following the Snake River, just as the Oregon Trail Pioneers did in the 1800s. Well, we didn’t do it just like the pioneers but you get the idea. The logical place to next have a kayak adventure was the Snake River; so we did!

We had planned some earlier kayak adventures as we crossed the other states between Florida and Washington but frankly, it was too cold.

In terms of adventures, I guess that I should point out that we pick docile rivers in our Hurricane Kayaks. Unlike previous kayaks that we have owned, our Hurricane Kayaks are not whitewater boats. Rolling my kayak upside down when going down a river isn’t attractive to me anymore. My mother told me over and over again to act my age. I’m trying mom.

Kennewick

We have camped along the Snake River in Kennewick before. We even kayaked in the Snake River at Kennewick before. Our kayak adventures here were restricted to the Hood Park area, just north of where the Snake River joins the Columbia River.

Unlike our previous trips into the Snake River in Washington this time we paddled up the river. Our old boats were too hard to paddle up river. This journey took us north in a moderate current up river way past Hood Park. Then we floated with the current back to our launch point. It is kind of like riding a bike uphill. The downhill return is much easier and much faster.

Clear Lake

This is also not the first time we have camped at Clear Lake and not the first time we have paddled kayaks on Clear Lake. Clear Lake is in a pine forest about 20 miles southwest of Spokane. The nearest town to Clear Lake is Medical Lake. These lakes are left over from the last time glaciers covered this area with ice.

Clear Lake is beautiful. The sunset picture at the beginning of this post is from our campsite on the shore of Clear Lake. We took our boats out on the lake multiple times during our visit. Our favorite time was late in the day as the sun was getting low on the horizon. Because this is summer and we are so far north, this means that some of our trips out on the water were after we had dinner.

Wind and freeboard

Paddling on Clear Lake in our Hurricane Kayaks was easier because the Hurricane design was not as influenced by the wind moving across the water. Weight has something to do with making paddling easier but there is also the low freeboard design. Our kayaks have what I would call a medium-low bow and stern freeboard. This means that the wind doesn’t catch the front as much as a high bow design and thus doesn’t push the kayak offline making them easier to paddle in a crosswind.

The low freeboard design also means that the kayak sometimes will cut into a wave rather than rising over it. We don’t usually kayak in large waves, so a low bow isn’t something I am worried about. The times I had waves crash over the front of the boat haven’t been a problem due to the clean bow design. The water rolls off. I have yet to have any water approach the open cockpit. If that were to happen I have confidence that the front combing (ridge around the cockpit) will prevent most water from entering.

More kayak adventure stories

For more information about our kayaks, we have these two previous posts including a professional photo shoot where our kayaks are the stars. Hurricane Kayaks and Kayak Movie Stars

After Clear Lake, we turned east, back into Idaho and Montana so you will most certainly enjoy more kayak adventure stories and photos in the next few posts. Sometime soon I will do a post about how we travel with our kayaks. I have also made some slight modifications even to the point of drilling a few holes in the kayak. You know when I really like something when I make small changes to make it better.

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Link to our new kayak at the Hurricane Aquasports website

Hurricane Prima 125 Kayak

Hurricane asked me to include the following hashtags about our kayaks. Honestly, I don’t know what they do or if I am doing it correctly.

#hurricanekayaks, #gowildtravellight, #hurricaneskimmer, #hurricanesantee, #hurricaneprima, #hurricanetandem, #leadersinlightweightkayaks, #hurricaneaquasports