Hi Brian
you forgot about the seat thing. After the sales talk ends, the final
purchase many times is determined (for the first time buyer) by the way the
seat fits. I see tons of boats bought and sold , not so much by the way they
handle, as by the way the seat fits. Seems like only a small amount of
people will plunk down their money, take the boat home, rip out an
uncomfortable seat and replace it with something that works for them (then
drill a hole for the bilge water exit fitting/ mount a foot pump or a C50 or
an electric of some sort such as a waterbuster)

best wishes
Roy


"Brian Nystrom" wrote in message
...
William R. Watt wrote:

Kayaks should be designed around people instead of designing for
isolated boat performance. I don't know of any kayak designers who
do this. Instead of concentrating on hull resistance, designers
could concentrate on paddler horsepower requirement. A low cost,
mass marketed kayak should be designed to suit a range of
horsepowers, paddler weights, and paddler dimensions. A kayak
produced for a more limited market can be designed to suit a
smaller range of horespowers, paddler weights, and paddler
dimensions.

That's exactly what the boats currently on the market do, it's just not
expressed in terms of horsepower, since the average paddler wouldn't
have a clue as to what that means.

An expensive one off kayak can be custom designed to
suit the power, weight, and dimensions of an individual paddler.

OK. One can build a custom boat and there are companies that will do so.

It would cost no more to custom design a plywood kayak built with
computer cut panels than to design a mass produced plywood kayak
built with computer cut panels.

How do you figure that? The most efficient hulls (least wetted surface
for a given displacement) are rounded in shape, which cannot be built
from flat panels. The cost to produce a mold for a one-off design is
prohibitive. One could have a boat custom designed and strip built, but
how many people are going to pay in excess of $5000 for a kayak?

The design ranges should be listed
in the sales information for each model of kayak. Design
performance graphs could be included, and for some boats actual
test data plotted.

To what end? This information is often available for racing boats -
where the paddler actually cares about such things - but do you honestly
think that the average recreational or touring paddler would have any
interest in this whatsoever? I'll bet most of them don't even read the
owner's manual, let alone a bunch of technical data that they don't
understand.

Such an approach to designing would answer the
buyer's perrenial question "which kayak is right for me?".

Not if they don't understand the information. Most won't and they're not
going to be willing to learn about hydrodynamics in order to do so.

The
approach is particulary appropriate for kayaks because they are
are primarily transporters of people using the person's own power
resources for propulsion. The cost of the design is small compared
to the cost of materials, labour, distribution, marketing, and
sales. It would not cos much to do a more complete job of the design
and provide better information for the buyer.

Perhaps so, but whatever money it did cost would be largely wasted,
since most paddlers are more interested in the color of their boat than
performance graphs. I think it's safe to say that the vast majority of
kayaks are purchased based on:

- Impulse. One sees a cheap rec boat at one of the Marts or wholesale
clubs and buys it

- Recommendations of a salesman. One goes to a sporting goods store or a
local kayak dealer and buys what they suggest.

- Recommendations of friends. One speaks with friends who are paddlers
and takes their advice.

- What's available in the area. Not all boats have dealers in every
area. Locally made products or those carried by local dealers will
predominate, regardless of whether they're the best boats for specific
paddlers. Few people will special order a boat and pay to have it
shipped to them. While there are a few niche manufacturers that cater to
this market, I'll wager that their combined annual output is less than
2000 boats out of a market of over 300,000.

While you and I and some others here may care about performance data,
it's pretty obvious that most kayak owners don't and never will.

martins wrote:

Hi Brian
you forgot about the seat thing. After the sales talk ends, the final
purchase many times is determined (for the first time buyer) by the way the
seat fits. I see tons of boats bought and sold , not so much by the way they
handle, as by the way the seat fits. Seems like only a small amount of
people will plunk down their money, take the boat home, rip out an
uncomfortable seat and replace it with something that works for them (then
drill a hole for the bilge water exit fitting/ mount a foot pump or a C50 or
an electric of some sort such as a waterbuster)

best wishes
Roy

Sad but true. Even sadder is the fact that many people buy boats based
on the PERCEPTION of comfort of the seat. The more it looks and feels
like an easy chair, the better they like it, not knowing that it's going
to be uncomfortable when paddling.