no really, what about floatation foam in your kayak?

I've worked with 2 part polyurethane foam quite a few times when I did boat repairs and really think you'd be a lot better off with the pool noodles.  If you stand the kayak on its stern and pour the mix in you'll probably end up with a mess...the stuff gets out of control very easily and definitely wont give you a flat surface!  It works great for filling fully enclosed voids though.  They're serious about the cure temps too...too cold and it doesn't expand enough and gets as hard as a rock, too hot and it expands like crazy.

since the foam is so bullet-proof and the cost of being stuck out there with a sinking boat and no help
is so high, it seems 'floating your boat' is at least as smart as wearing a PFD, if not smarter.

one problem fuzzy tom with foam at the bottom of the boat is that if you get water in it, the boat
might be less stable, it'll want to flip with the foam at the top if it has a lot of water in the hull above
the water line.

The best configuration would probably be to have foam at the sides with a channel down the middle
for the (heavier) water to collect keeping the center of gravity low. This does match well with the idea of the
pool noodles along the 'rails' of the kayak.  This would be fairly easy to accomplish, set your boat up on
the rail, pour it in, let it expand, flip the boat after it cures do the other side with an equal amount.
rotational inertia about the long axis would be increased slightly because of additional mass along the rails
giving you a tiny bit more stability too.

Ethan and I paddled a swamped triple 300 yards to shore off bean hollow.  All it had for floatation in the hull was a live jacket and a bit of 'great stuff' foam that he used to stabilize his mast.  The same should be the case with a couple pool noodles.  As long as you're wearing a wetsuit you should come out okay.

what if you are 4 miles offshore and being circled by the shark that swamped you?

the wetsuit alone is not looking so good then.

I just noticed the crazy looking folks featured in that eXtreme website
http://www.malibukayaks.com/kayak_extreme.asp

Insane people, clearly.  You can tell by their wild eyes and odd hairdos.


I've thought a bunch about expanding 2-part closed cell foam for my kayak, too.   I've got a bunch of noodles in my hull now, alongside my pump, and they're seldom in the way.  I guess I'm just waiting from someone else to do it first.  But honestly, I think that a sealed foam insert would be just fine although I'd want to put a lubricant on the inside of the hull before I did it to aid in expansion.  Maybe once I win the lottery and have a shiny new x-factor I'll try it for my old beat-up XL.

I noticed an earlier post said to put the floatation as low in the water as possible...  actually, that increases the chance your boat will float upside down if it fills with water.  The noodles should be high up and in the rails if possible!

While its not as cheap as pool noodle, there is a lot of commercially available yak floatation available for the SIK crowd that would work well inside most SOTs

I took some newbie paddlers out one time with brand spanking new XTs under them.  One boat had a defect in a scupper hole, though. It did it's thing after we bounced the bottom off some rocks. We were headed around a wash point in about 5 - 6 foot swell and the boat went down fast, stern first just like in a shipwreck or something.  It floated, sort of, but it was not an easy thing to deal with - in fact it was scary. I gave the guy my boat and swam it in through the rocks while he pulled (luckily we had a throw rope). 

The lesson for me was that if we were out at sea, we would have been screwed, sharks or not.  I did some scrounging and found some old dock floatation that I carved to fit in the bow and stern recesses on my Pro.  They can be removed if I'm going to paddle places were they're not needed.  You need to have enough floatation to get your boat high enough in the water to make your hand pump effective.  And of course you need to carry a hand pump and a chunk of furniture foam to bail out the water the pump can't get.

Even with a crack in the hull, we were able to stop about every five minutes and pump it out.  It got us home.  BTW, one thing that really helped was that the guy's wife had brought chewing gum in her dry bag for some odd reason.  We chewed up a wad of this and rammed it in the crack.  it really slowed down the leak.  I'm thinking of carrying plumbers putty in my gear now, for these types of situations.

T-Rex, missed your post somehow. good info. I still wanna do it. that link I provided says
that the foam can be laid down in layers, suggesting it does have a fairly flat surface.
clearly if it's really hot out and the mixture is not too even, I could see it getting out of control.
I don't have access to a heated shop so this will have to wait for summer, which also gives me
time to come up with an alternative. the pool noodle in the rails is probably a good half-way
measure.

pescadore, I knew you were a burly outdoorsman!  . 

scwafish, those flotation bags like @ NRS are expensive. plus they are air-filled which is
not exactly maintenance free. the foam would be fire and forget.

jmairey, Again, the outdoorsman thing is laughable.  really, just stuff some dock foam or a pool noodle or a float bag in your boat, get a pump and stop thinking about it.

if you have the time to think about it, why rush to a half-fast solution?

I expect to be kayak fishing for the next couple of decades. might as well give some thought
to the limitations of the equipment. thinking is free. no cost. yep! a little painful
sometimes of course...  But there's really nothing to be gained by not thinking about
it for a bit. Not having a solution won't stop me from going out this spring, but over time,
the odds can catch up with you, so it's worth taking some effort to prepare against the
worst emergencies. for example, I did get a compass and a handheld VHF. still haven't
bothered with a PFD or sonar or GPS, but I do wear more rubber than most people
which reflects my own opinion of the dangers of hypothermia vs being unconcious in the water.

in every boating safety book, they always say: STAY WITH THE BOAT.  well that makes even more
sense if the boat can't sink.

the reason we all have plastic kayaks with no foam flotation is because that is what is
easy to build and sell. If the envelope of performance is pushed a bit, then it's no surprise
that the base offering doesn't really cut it.

So while I'd say the pool noodle/dock foam/SIS flotation bag thing is okay, there really ought to
be a better solution for ocean going fishermen on plastic kayaks.

It's interesting that a number of people have thought about this enough to do something about it,
yourself included, but everybody does it a little differently and nobody seems to think that their
solution is clearly the best. So therefore, there's a lot of room for improvement.

There was a book published in the 80's which was basically sea kayaking horror stories, I have not seen
this book, I wonder how many of them involved the boat taking on water?

and pescadore, they were lucky they had you to swim in through the rocks!

But why try to rush to the perfect solution???

Most people here do things very differently than what they originally started out with.  Over time, the process of refinement has tuned our my individual way of doing things.  In this case, I don't think you'll find a "clearly the best solution".  And I don't think it calls for one.  Something like pool noodles is good enough IMO.

BTW, get yourself a PFD.   

-Allen

Dude, a  PFD is the cornerstone of boating safety. Your VHF should be attached to you body via it. Also, a whistle, knife and light on there are good Ideas too. A floating yak won't do you any good when it's being blown away from you at sea. Curious, does full wet suit keep you floating head up? You can roll in the surf zone and get bonked unconscious, PFD might save your life in that circumstance too.

It's really unlikely that the PFD will
make the difference between life and death for me. in fact, I think the odds
are higher you will die of hypothermia before I drown. the standard bet?
survivor of choice takes winner to Ono's for lunch? 

I have surfed for over 20 years in surf up to 25 feet tall.

all I have on is a wetsuit. I'm still here.

all of a sudden I'm going to wear a pfd while kayaking?

I do have a surf leash for my yak tho, I might use it if the wind comes up and
I'm way out to sea after salmon. bluekayaks stories of high-wind person-kayak
separation are nasty,  .

one end to the bow toggle, the other end, my right ankle.

I think the foam for the kayak is more important than the pfd and I'm willing to bet
my life on it. I've been through a lot and I'm still alive. Are you sure your judgement is
better than mine? you can think about it.

I'm not saying a pfd is not good, my kids wear 'em, I'm just saying that they aren't enough,
or even the most important thing.

the noodles are probably 80% of the best solution with about 20% of the effort. probably
a good tradeoff.

I'm not saying a pfd is not good, my kids wear 'em, I'm just saying that they aren't enough,
or even the most important thing.

my opinion on the matter: PFD's are important.

 5 years ago, I took my first trip to the green bouy just outside HMB with Pierre, I got flipped by a rouge wave and was instantly separated from my yak and my paddle (I now leash my paddle - but remember to unleash when landing on big surf)
I was thankful for 3 things:
1) being a newbie back then, I paddled with a more experienced yaker = Pierre
2) my PFD and farmer john wetsuit - I stayed warm and afloat.
3) strapped on my PFD was a whistle - I did not have a VHF back then (Pierre had one)  -but because Pierre could not hear my "HELP!"....I used my whistle to get his attention.

When I finally got topside on my yak with the help of Pierre, my paddle was 20 ft away and drifting even further. Pierre paddled over to retrieve it for me.
Bottom line, if Pierre was not around to help a bro in need, the PFD and the wetsuit would have kept me alive(FYI: I'm not the best swimmer). I now think of the PFD as not just a floatation device but a survival kit as well. The whistle, dive knife, a couple of arial flares on one pocket and a signal mirror and a compass on the other pocket keeps me prepared - especially when salmon season arrives.

Please wear a PFD - life is just too precious 

good story and good advice, mooch!

I spent my youth on a swim team. I also worked as a lifeguard.
I've been a surfer most of my adult life and done a few triathlons and
open water swims (although not for many years).

for me the pfd gets in the way, but I am not advocating anybody else not having one, just
that there's always the exception to the rule and that just having a pfd
is probably not enough for offshore kayak fishing in cold water, and perhaps not even
the most important thing for some people.

I would really like to have a kayak that doesn't sink or swamp too easily. the whole point
of a SOT is that it doesn't swamp, but there seem to be many stories of them getting
filled up with water one way or the other, so that is the eventuallity I am concerned about.
some sort of foam is probably the answer to this one. I am just trying to zero in on the
solution for me.