no really, what about floatation foam in your kayak?

Well, I had a couple quarts of this expanding foam, and it finally got to 70 degrees,
so I tried it out this morning.

short story: stick with the pool noodles unless you are a foam engineer.

long story:

The foam didn't get all the way back to the stern, so now I have an air pocket back there that could become a water pocket.

I did make a 'chute' out of a cardboard rod shipping tube and cover it with plastic garbage bag. then attempt to pour the foam down the
chute into the stern, but it was hard to get it steep enough, so it didn't make it all the way to the stern.

I used a drill driven squirrel mixer which worked quite well.

I ended up with a fair bit of mess to clean up, empty containers and the like.

So it's probably not worse than the pool noodles, but it's not much better either.

It still has the potential to be better than the noodles, filling all air space with very lightweight and strong closed cell foam, but
it's probably best done by the experienced person. 

Ideally it would be a factory option to make one's kayak unsinkable.

I cant believe this thread is still alive.

Wow I guess my cheapo noodles will serve me better anyway I was kinda waiting to see how the foam would work

J, I'll buy you a beer for trying! I admire your tenacity  

Mooch,  I put a little foam up by the bow so you can check it out next time you see me.

looks like guiness foam. which will be what I'll take when you buy me that beer!

the extra weight is pretty small. a couple pounds maybe.

The noodles are the thing for the average guy (80% saftey coverage with 20% effort)
but for anybody hoping to try solo bluekayak style adventures on a regular basis, they fall a little short.

The foam would work, but you really have to commit to it, mix up a big batch and pour that
so it'll fill the stern. I made a small batch as a test, but that basically blocked the pour route
for the rest of the foam,  .

Btw, I watched a monster garage where they made a pontoon boat out of a schoolbus.
They had to use $4000 worth of foam to fill the pontoons.   . Which if you've seen
the show would be impossible since they only have a $3000 budget, but the foam got
donated by the foam company.

Nice try, and thanks for the report.  Nothing ventured, nothing gained..

Craigh

7 pages of talk and the conclusion is pool noodles work fine for the average paddler.  Good stuff 


Now for the, "No really, what about floatation foam in your kayak.....Part Duex:  Removing said foam" 

forget the pool noodles.....how many wine corks would it take to float a punctured kayak ?

Heaven forbid that one actually purchase a kayak float bag, built just for this purpose. Or go ghetto, and use a good sized drybag that hasn't been purged of air as your emergency flotation device.

What I really have to love is all the SOT folks that point to the cockpit of a SIK, and say "look, a great big hole that can fill with water!! Run away !!!". And then conveniently forget that modern SIK's have two bulkheads, so that even if you are out of the boat with a gaping hole in the bow, the stern compartment will keep everything afloat. Whereas a hole anywhere below the waterline in a SOT that doesn't have added flotation means Davey Jones has a new addition.

Scott

Scott,
 Good idea using a float bag for the correct purpose, however that would detract from the adventure of rigging ghetto style!
 Whatever you choose, stay safe.

During the summer I have pulled the hatches off my yak and filled her with water. I was able to sit on the yak, and paddle my mini sub just below the surface. This was in fresh water, so I imagine that it would float even more in the salt. I'll try to find the pictures. There were no air pockets. A couple of pool noodles would have kept the yak above the water line for sure.

-Brian

I had a borrowed  kayak sink underneath me offshore once. It had a leak that my "friend" who I had borrowed it from was unaware of. After two hours slowly taking on water it reached a point where it dawned on me that my body weight wasn't really affecting the trim of the boat anymore. I paddled in like a mad man, made it another fifty yards and down she went. First time out, no wetsuit, 50^o water and no one saw me go down. It was a very long, cold,  lonely swim. As I dragged myself onto the rocks on shore the fire dept showed up. It took 30 minutes with heat-packs in my armpits to stop the hypothermic shaking.

I can assure you that in chop or any swell at all there is a point, long before the hull is completely filled, where it is no longer possible to stay on top of the yak. The swell comes up over the deck and keeps rising up to your chest and beyond. The buoyancy of the yak cannot react fast enough to the momentum created by the rising and falling water. The yak drops off the back of the swell and accelerates down to the trough and continues down as the face of the next swell overtakes you. I seriously doubt that a few pool noodles could affect this dynamic in all but the most ideal conditions. Although my experience was extreme, in real-world off-shore conditions I tend to think that big chunks of foam would be necessary. A good bilge pump might have saved the boat too

My 2 cents anyway.

once again, the float bags require attention, filling, etc. They could fail at the worst time.

big teeth (or any puncturing device) could punture both the hull and the float bags.

you cannot easily get them back into the stern area.

bluekayak uses these on his 160 (non tankwell).

the foam does not have these issues.

part of the attraction of a plastic boat is that you can abuse it.

In the right hands, the foam is the right answer.

in the hands of the amateur it is not.

The manufacturers or dealers could offer a foam filled bow and stern as an option.

for a 12' drifter on a lake, the flotation is not needed, but for a 16 foot tarpon that somebody
is going to take out 5 miles solo, the flotation would be a very good insurance policy.

A lot of good ideas require good execution. I think foam flotation for SOT is a good idea, but it
needs the kind of execution that you get when somebody like erik kunz or sean white do the
executing.

your friend,

foamy.

Very interesting thread.


I like the pool noodle idea as it is easy simple and cheap.  Stay with the boat and wetsuit/pfd seems to be the best advice with a swamped boat.

I always wear a pfd for 2 reasons.

1.  The wife makes me
2.  I worry far more about a medical condition happening that renders me unconcious or incapacitated than ANY other worry on a kayak.  I don't even bother to think about shark attack, doesn't even hit the radar.

2 being far more important to me than 1.

This thread has convinced me to purchase a bilge pump though.

My pfd sort of sucks, but I still wear it everytime out.  I used to not wear them on lakes, but thinking about it for a minute made me wonder what would happen if I had a heart attack or something.  What was going to keep my head above water.

Also, I fished a tournament in Santa Cruz last year and got (as usual) very seasick.  I was only a mile or so off of shore.  I decided that I was in a tournament dammit and I was gonna fish through it.  BAD mistake.  I got progressively more and more sick until I finally called it and tried to paddle in.  That was the most difficult paddle I have ever done, and I barely made it back to safe harbor.  Had I attempted to fish for half an hour more, I would have had to call for help on my radio.  It REALLY got me thinking about a pfd as a saftey device for medical emergencies rather than just keeping me afloat if I fall off my yak.

One thing that I think is a must have saftey device (after reading this thread) is a kayak leash as well as a paddle leash.  Just a little something to connect me to my yak.  Nothing would suck more than to watch your kayak blown away from you when you are miles off shore.

MolBasser

Closed-deck boats are a different story I know and, yes,  I know I am always bringing in my sea kayaking point of view, no doubt irritating some of you. But I am undaunted by that concern--sea kayakers have been naviagating frigid waters far longer for sport than open-deck boaters have been recreating and fishing and they have wisdom that I will pass it along in case it saves a life one day. I have done some training under the BCU (British Canoe Union) and those folks paddle really rough seas so they take their kayaking seriously (the North Sea, Greenland, Iceland,and expeditions around the world). they are _very_ safety conscious--to get a BCU Five-Star rating (Coach level)  you undergo night navigation and night surf landings and launchings equivalent to Army Ranger Training. I am nowhere near that level, but I have taken courses with them and they are _serious_ and they have important wisdom to impart.

One of the cardinal rules in traditional sea kayaking is to ensure you have floatation fore and aft in both or all three (some boats have a near-aft 'day hatch' like my Nigel Dennis Romany) because a kayak filled with water does not float or manoeuvre well nor is it bouyant enough to hold you out of the cold, cold ocean let alone get you to port safe. In sea kayaking, we are supposed to fill our hatches with dry bags or float bags to ensure this floatation is there in case a hatch cover some off in a violent sea or a collision (like an encounter with a reef during a ride on a 'boomer'). traditional sea kayaks are desinged to be full of a week's worht of supplies for an expedition. Sea kyakaing rescues are full of stories of people who didn't grasp this concept.

Now, granted, open deck boats have the advantage that they don't have a cockpit that fills with water on a capsize and wet exit, so perhaps the danger is less obvious and less frequently encountered. But if an open deck boat fills with water, it is even harder to drain out on the sea than a closed deck boat. Adding floatation helps any boat stay manageable when swamped. I don't worry about this on lakes because the trip to shore in the worst case is doable (I always dress for immersion) but the Pacific is a whole different story.

So: 1) ALWAYS carry a pump--ALWAYS, 2) put in floatation for the mighty Pacfic--she eats mariners regularly and she'll eat you too given the chance--do everything you can to deny her the meal. I saw a lot of talk about the inevitability of a GWS fatality of a kayak fisher. Let me tell you--before that happens there will be several times as many exposure fatalities due to lack of basic safety planning--the odds are far greater hypothermia will get you than the Man in the Gray Suit. Please think about it. I want to fish with every single one of you and have you soundly out fish me one day. I don't want to have to tell my wife one day about the fishing kayaker i know and the tragedy. Be safe out there. Live long and fish well.

There I've spoken up. I did my duty as I see it. Take it or leave it. But know this, I did it for not for myself but for you and your family. May you never, ever need it.

"The sea is feline. It licks your feet, its huge flanks purr very pleasant for you, but will crack your bones and eat you, for all that, and wipe the crimsoned foam from its jaws as if nothing happened".
     -- Oliver Wendell Holmes

I think it is easier, cheaper, and generally better to throw a few pool noodles in there if you are really worried about it. The added foam is going to and a lot of weight with not a lot of benefit IMHO.

I think you're right Bill. And this is especially true to any of you Hobie Outback owners. Due to how they designed the gunwales, the pool noodles slide right in and are held in place with no need for gluing. Although some gluing may be a good idea. I'm sure many other kayaks have the same fit. A simple cheap and effective solution!

P.S. Nice work Jmairey!!

P.P.S. Some maker should think about making a foam impregnated, unsinkable kayak.. Boston whaler??

This discussion revolves around several important but independent points: 1) floatation, 2) the nature of the emergency, and 3) the nature of the 'sea' and 4) the efficiency of rescue versus the danger of the water.

#4: in small- to medium-sized lake, abandoning the craft if submerged might be a good choice if the shore is near, the waves slight, and you are dressed to avoid hypothermia out of the water on a windy shore but in the cold North Pacific, most paddlers who abandon their craft become statistics with horrifyingly precise regularity. Better to get on that VHF ( channel 16 ) with a May Day and shoot off some flares when you sight the air or water rescue craft than 'swim for it'. Know your limits and practice self-rescues and rescuing others until it becomes second nature.

#1: floatation is very important in helping keep a craft controllable when inundated. Most sea kayaks have sealed bulkheads for a reason and that is what makes them seaworthy even in small craft advisories. The Inuit hunted Seal and Walrus risking life and limb daily in those craft so they  perfected a self-contained craft that could handle storms seas.

#2: mostly self-explanatory but one key point should be made: the less expereinced you are, the longer it will take for you to understand the point in whcih you enter 'real trouble'. Food for thought.

#3: Summer lake fishing for Bass is far different than Fall fishing for stripers in the Delta. in terms of water temperature. As we say in sea kayaking--"dress for the 'swim' not the paddle". That's time-honored advice and might save your life.

1. Dress for the swim not hte paddle
2. Carry emergnecy signalling equipment
3. Never abandon your boat or your paddle unless the equipment is in dire state or the shore very, very close (and even then think twice). For doing so materially decreases the odds of your survival. Grim yes, but accurate.