She says, Im getting that lonely sinking feeling,
You know what I mean?
With his hand on her back hes thinking,
where does that leave me?
– cowboy junkies

The 2007 Colman Fun 94 kayak is 9’4” feet long, has a capacity of 250lbs.  If it flips, the poor bastard paddling it may be in real trouble. It would be hard to design a recreational kayak that could hold more water while at the same time be almost impossible to drain as the “fun 94”.  In fact, in my opinion the Fun 94 represents just about everything bad in recreational kayaks.  The only thing you could do to make them worse is rent them out to holiday makers who are taking enough risk simply by being in on the water at all.

As you know I spent part of an evening the other day towing a swamped paddler and his rented Colman Fun 94 back into the beach at Devil’s Lake State Park’s south shore.  My first thought at the time was that I would simply pull the kayak over the hull of my kayak, drain the water out, and put the paddler back in his boat.  Of course that was not going to happen. The Fun 94 seems almost designed to fill with, and then hold as much water as possible.  The gaping bow offers lots of leg room due to its twin humps..but once inverted the humps are simply troughs that hold lots of water.  When you lift the bow of the upturned kayak, the molding channels the water into the cavernous back end which collects water due to its enclosed shape and for the most part cannot be simply drained.  Practically, a single assisting kayaker can drain about half the water from a swamped “94″.  Enough to float it upright, but not enough to place the paddler back in the kayak.  The boat would flip as soon as someone tried to crawl back in.  Could you pump it out?  Sure.  Eventually.

Interestingly enough when my friend Keith Wikle was over for a visit with his family last year we dealt with a very similar, and swamped kayak on another local lake.  These boats.. man!..

Of course the Fun 94 retaining water is just the beginning.  It’s amazingly hard to hold onto this kayak in the water as well.  It has no deck lines of course and is not molded with any sort of human friendly hand holds.  The kayak I towed did have one toggle but that was really the only target for a swimmer.  While we realize that these floating bath tubs are meant for calm water, it would not take much wind to send one flying away from a paddler faster than they could swim after it. IF they could swim or stay afloat.  Which is a reasonable question in of itself.

Aggravating the whole situation is the fact that the rental company gives paddlers a loose fitting foam type II life vest to go with the boat.  While plenty of people out in these silly craft won’t wear a PFD at all, the ones that do will be lucky to keep the $10 floating orange cushion around their bodies at all.  Honestly if these vests offer any protection it’s got to be in the legal form to the vendor. You’d be hard pressed to show they do much to protect the user under anything but amazingly ideal conditions.

In the end, the reality is that you have humans way out of their range of experience in boats that seem amazingly unsafe, wearing  (or sitting on) cheap, barley usable life vests all gathered together in a perfect storm waiting for disaster to strike on an otherwise warm and sunny day.  Then when something does happen a law will be passed to protect “Kayakers” from themselves.  Those of us who have been watching this recreational fiasco from the sidelines will be the ones to get fee’d up and regulated.  Isn’t that just the way?

Now to be fair there are decent, reasonably priced, recreational kayaks & gear out there these days. Personally I think some reputable kayak company or vendor should be calling the concessions folks at Devil’s Lake State Park and working a deal to get them some safe rental gear and the training they need as well.  There are way too many people  at this insanely popular park using their rental boats to be bobbing around in Fun 94s… I can’t imagine it would hurt someone like Current Designs or a regional paddle shop to have hundreds of holiday makers each season paddling something like the Kestrel 120s around.  If they later decided to buy a rec boat, you and I both know what they’d look for first.

** Current Designs Kestral Image reposted from their website.

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