Trying out a new toy ( for us)
- Thread starter DAVA390
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Scott, we have the Sea Eagle 370 and we like it. On our little Catalina 22 it makes a decent dinghy/playtoy.
It's durable. The wind picked it up once and tumbled it across fifty yards of oyster bar, it sustained only one small puncture. A cheaper inflatable would have been history. We were able to paddle it back to the boat and fix it on the spot with the included patch kit.
We sprung for the deluxe seats. Glad we did.
Finally got to try out the Sea Eagle 330. It is definitely worth the small investment to have this on board for wet excursions to the beach, but probably not as a dinghy (at least not this size). I tried this out at Tices Shoal with hundreds of boats around over the holiday weekend. As a Coast Guard helicopter flew overhead and then circled around me once, I had the nervous feeling that I was somehow about to get a citation for NOT wearing a PFD! Of course, I was in about 5' of water or less and the inflated kayak is a perfectly suitable flotation device, so I was thinking about my arguments. Sue wouldn't get on with me or alone, so I didn't get her opinion yet. Therefore, I'm still uncertain about getting another. We'll probably need a real dinghy in any event.
They provide a guide for estimating the air pressure but it doesn't appear to be very precise ... it is basically a thumb imprint on the inflated chambers. I don't know how you can determine the pressure with any kind of gauge, given the pump configuration. It was very easy to fill with the foot pump. I bought the electric pump, but it really isn't needed. I think there is a stabilization chamber at the front of the kayak that I didn't notice and didn't fill with air as I was filling the main chambers. That might make a difference with tracking and stability, but I didn't have any difficulty regardless. It was pretty easy to get in from the swim ladder, but I had one foot on a rung below the water level to get my center of gravity lower as I was getting in. If I was wearing shoes and didn't want to get my feet wet, it may have been more difficult.
They provide a guide for estimating the air pressure but it doesn't appear to be very precise ... it is basically a thumb imprint on the inflated chambers. I don't know how you can determine the pressure with any kind of gauge, given the pump configuration. It was very easy to fill with the foot pump. I bought the electric pump, but it really isn't needed. I think there is a stabilization chamber at the front of the kayak that I didn't notice and didn't fill with air as I was filling the main chambers. That might make a difference with tracking and stability, but I didn't have any difficulty regardless. It was pretty easy to get in from the swim ladder, but I had one foot on a rung below the water level to get my center of gravity lower as I was getting in. If I was wearing shoes and didn't want to get my feet wet, it may have been more difficult.
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Yeah, I'm pretty alarmed by the man boobs myself. Aging really sucks. I thought hair loss was bad ...
Coincidentally... our Sea Eagle 330 tried to escape the other night in about 12 kts of breeze... had to go retrieve it at Penrose Pt. State Park at about 9:30 PM, I seriously contemplated letting it find a new home! The strategy was to loop out around the two spits and rocks, and hope that it would skip on past all of the snags at the end of the point and eventually find its way to us waiting for it. Luckily, a family in a small RIB with an outboard zoomed in to save the rest of the evening for us!
Ditto, on a lot of the observations on the Sea Eagle. It's a little too unstable for anything other than a short trip from boat to shore. Maybe with more experience, we'd feel more confident, but the tippy nature of the thick inflatable floor don't do a lot to boost our confidence or to inspire us to take it out more often. I find that if we slightly under inflate the floor while fully inflating the sides that it helps with stability. We have a 'Pro' model set up from several years ago, and we will only slightly inflate the bottoms of the seats in an effort to keep our COM as low as possible.
I'm currently looking to upgrade and can't even begin to tell you how pleased I was to come across this current thread!
Ditto, on a lot of the observations on the Sea Eagle. It's a little too unstable for anything other than a short trip from boat to shore. Maybe with more experience, we'd feel more confident, but the tippy nature of the thick inflatable floor don't do a lot to boost our confidence or to inspire us to take it out more often. I find that if we slightly under inflate the floor while fully inflating the sides that it helps with stability. We have a 'Pro' model set up from several years ago, and we will only slightly inflate the bottoms of the seats in an effort to keep our COM as low as possible.
I'm currently looking to upgrade and can't even begin to tell you how pleased I was to come across this current thread!