TLDR: Let’s go to New Zealand
Do we take a boat? Spoiler, you can skip the end of the blog. I just start talking about skegs, and paddles.
I’m not sure exactly when the plan started, but like many people in the world, we had aspirations of making the trip to New Zealand. I would probably be lying if I said that the Lord of the Rings movies didn’t play a role in the decision to make a trip to the Southern Hemisphere. The kids were out of the house, one retirement was obtained, one business was sold, and we weren’t getting any younger. We met with everyone we knew that had been, and were lucky enough to even meet with a few natives. We obsessively scoured books and blogs for all the intel we could find, and put together a plan that covered everything we wanted to see. We picked February for our start date. In New Zealand, February is like September in New Mexico. School is back in session, and it is the beginning of the off season. Plenty of good weather left in the year, but theoretically fewer crowds.
Besides pouring over guidebooks, maps, and the internet about the best ways to explore New Zealand, I started to get obsessed with the gear we would be taking. Much to Barb’s dismay, I told her I didn’t need to do any bike riding on our trip. We each have our things, Barb’s is dance and I like to ride bicycles. Bicycles take a lot of gear, time, and it isn’t something we can do together. There was a lot we wanted to see and do in NZ, and bikes would just make things more complicated.
What we can do together is paddle. We really like our paddling. We have lugged many different kayaks around the country, but we have found that our 15’ tandem inflatable by Aquaglide offered us the best in quality, and packability. Fits in the roof box on our van, and we can be on the lake within 10-20 minutes of parking somewhere.
One of our best examples was getting to Lake Louise in Banff early enough to snag a killer parking spot. We got the boat in the water and had the lake to ourselves for two magical hours before the flotilla of tourists covered the lake with their red, rental canoes. After a wonderful breakfast in the parking lot, we spent the day hiking up to the glaciers seen in the distance. That evening, we went back out on the lake when all the tourists were pulled back in for the night. Lake Louise is a popular wedding destination, and the newlywed brides lined the shore for their sunset wedding pictures. I counted no fewer than six photographers that were annoyed at the prospect of photoshopping out a couple of middle aged paddlers from the pristine backdrop of their photos.
Our travels within the continent are aided by the fact that we load up our van with all of our toys and just go where the wind takes us. Travel to New Zealand presented us with the challenge of loading our gear into one of those fancy airplanes before we can get on the road with our little van.
Our Aquaglide boat, and the rest of our gear was topping the scale at 50#s. That’s just about all you can easily fly with, but the boat takes up a lot of room. I tried finding vehicles with roof racks, but it wasn’t going very well. That’s when my attention shifted to Alpacka Rafts. I have been stopping myself from buying a lightweight pack raft for several years. There’s some people that strap these boats to their bicycles in order to inflate the boats, and turn around to strap their bicycles to the boat in order to float down a river. Theoretically, I can go ride my bike out into the woods and camp, but I don’t do it very often. I really don’t want to add drowning to my bike rides, so all I do is look.
Since I keep looking, I saw that Alpacka raft developed and released a tandem boat. It’s a kayak shaped boat, and instead of traveling with 50#s of kayak that packs down to the size of a decent ottoman, how about 13#s that fits into a bag the size of my sleeping bag?
After we got the boat, my biggest concern was how this thing was going to handle. I have been in a tandem kayak before that didn’t have a skeg, or rudder and it’s a pretty good way to make sure a relationship goes poorly. This big old banana is as smooth on the bottom as Ken and Barbie. Alpacka was very helpful. Their recommendation was for a small skeg that has a pretty narrow profile. I was pretty fixated with a standard fin box that uses standard skegs.
First, I wanted to make sure it was something we really needed! Hate to go to all the work of attaching a skeg, only to have this thing paddle just fine.
Oh my freaking god! The twisty track was our path out with the boat. It wasn’t just that we couldn’t get it going straight, if we stopped paddling, the boat would do a 180 and flip us backwards. Barb got a bit grumpy. I laughed a lot.
On our return trip, I had Barb just go through the motions of paddling, and I did all the steering. It wasn’t super fun, but it was easier to control.
Let’s get that fin box.
I found a two piece fin box by Air 7. Great option since a one piece would be twice as much to roll up.
Finding the center was a little tricky. I wanted it further back, but there really wasn’t an appropriate place behind the end of the main floor.
I used Stabond from NRS.
Note to self, glue one on at a time. Trying to do them both simultaneously was a little tricky.
The material on the fin box was stiffer than the boat, and was hard to get to lay flat, but it attached quite well.
How’d it go? Freaking Perfect! Smiles everywhere. Water was perfect, and the boat would go straight with minimal effort.
That track looks much better.
The other issue we were experiencing was that the width and height of the boat made our paddle angles very steep. You had to concentrate very carefully to keep the drip rings outside of the boat. We ended up with substantial water inside the boat.
Time for new paddles!
Aquabound Stingrays. Four piece, adjustable, 230-245mm for Barb and 240 – 255mm for me.
The longer paddles are way better, and we keep that boat pretty dry inside.
Too bad there’s no fix for my legroom!
Yeesh, enough about that boat, let’s get to New Zealand!
Our Fin Box We already have a selection of skegs from our other boat. Another reason we chose this system.