Discussion: Tomcat Aire Inflatable Kayak

I'm curious if anyone in/near Ontario, Canada has one of these:

http://www.aire.com/aire/products/default.aspx?id=...

They're set to be used in the AR World Champs this December and I'd like to see/test/borrow/rent/paddle one beforehand if possible.

I know Frontier Adventure Racing sold a fleet of these a few years ago, and I was curious if anyone local picked one up.

Many thanks

...and if anyone has experience in portaging them 10k and can let me know what is the best method, we'd both be eternally grateful.

I'm interested in responses to this too. None available in the UK.

G-Stix

Looks like a river tour company in southern ontario uses them as part of their fleet. Give them a call, looks like there season is almost done, you might be able to borrow one for a bit. .

http://www.grandriverrafting.ca/tandem-kayak-renta...

FB can suggest appropriate profanities. And some inappropriate ones.

I hunt these in the wild. Captive ones I'm obligated to leave alone.

Nasty. Such a shame that good paddlers will be reduced to the common denominator by these boats with a very limiting hull speed. A very wrong choice for a world championship.
For portaging: bring wheels. Those things are pigs.
Sorry.

Best bring a machete or spear to put the Tomcat out of its misery after the race. I've only portaged them short distances, but it wasn't pretty.

Here is a photo of how we portaged them ~10km.
https://plus.google.com/photos/1021667098376335288...
Not the easiest things to bushwack with.

I can certainly tell you how NOT to portage them for xtended periods :-)

I have it on good authority that there is one in the woods just North of Prince Rupert...
Ask Storm how much he liked them.

If I may wax serious for a moment. These things are pigs. I sincerely hope that the vast majority of your paddling is on moving water, since paddling these on a lake or ocean is just hellish. They are twitchy and very, very slow. Some teams deployed poles to lash the boats together end to end, in effect trying to create one long 4-person craft: not sure how well that worked. Sails can help reduce your workload if not your speed.
We and a couple of others toyed with the idea of wrapping a few tie-down straps around the boat and cinching them tight in an attempt to narrow the hull, but decided against the experiment. Not sure if it's feasible or beneficial, but sounds ok in theory.
If, however, you are on rivers then you will have a much better time. They are super stable and self-bailing. The backrests are a nice touch after sitting in them for 14+ hours.
Portaging them can be terrible, as they are heavy to carry uninflated on a single person's back (you will want some sort of backpack type strap setup), and both heavy and unwieldy when inflated. If possible I would keep them inflated for the portages, as deflating and inflating can take a fair bit of time. For a road portage wheels would be gold. On steep and twisty trails, prepare to suck it up and suffer.

Your team-mate Super-K paddled them at RTNX Haida Gwai. You should talk to her, too.

My team paddled these at RTNX Haida Gwaii, as well as dragging them over a mountain and rolling them up and carrying them on our backs for more than a couple hours (you can see us in the RTNX video doing this). There was no easy way to move these things forward - on water or on land. A few points to consider:

1. There's a strap for the seats that wraps around (and under) the boat (at least that was how they were originally set up when we got them). Don't use it! It creates huge drag and even caught a bunch of seaweed under the boat while we were paddling.

2. When you roll up the boats, you'll need a way to carry the seats separately (as they don't roll up well with the boat) so that's 4 more things to carry, along with the pump and paddles.

3. The boats were very heavy and awkward to carry rolled up on our back, mainly because we didn't have any proper straps to carry them (we actually attached them to our backpacks) and the weight was so far back (because the "roll" is so big) that you constantly had to fight from falling backwards - a waste of energy.

4. It takes quite a while to inflate/deflate the boats, especially well enough to roll them up as tightly as possible and to take out/put back in the seats.

5. Make sure you have the patch kit for the boats. I know of at least 3 boats that had holes in them during the RTNX race.

Also, my team used a towing system with PVC pipe (as LosDobos described - to make 1 long boat) for our race in Scotland last year and it worked great (but this was with canoes) for a long flat water section. I designed the system to break down into pieces that can fit into a bike box and also so that the boats could be detached on the fly. Happy to share more info on this.

Inflate them with Hydrogen... it's about time someone brought this back as a lifting gas... Helium is so last week. :-)

Hindenburg?....

'Everyone' wants to see AR get more coverage :-)

Yes, AR needs more explosions. We've already got the nudity. There's no such thing as "bad" publicity.
FB, I'll message Miley Cyrus and tell her you're looking for a teammate.

I am going to the race and following Team Thule. I will be sure to get them on film swearing in 3 different languages at the boats.