Finally got my battery

I'm not a fan boy, but there are hundreds of kayakers using no-name Chinese blue bricks and I've only heard of one catastrophic failure, first-person and from a reliable source.

Are there other reports of these things erupting in a kayak?

They are manufactured as batteries for CCTV installations and are not inherently dangerous, nor are they complete junk.

They're light and they're small and when they work, they do the job, but they don't last like an SLA either in discharge rate or recharge cycles.  Most of these blue bricks claim 5000 recharge cycles, but a lot of folks report far fewer - like 100 cycles - before the battery pack fails, and most can't be discharged below 7 volts without risking damage to the battery packs.

They're popular among the folks on NWKA who use them in all conditions.  I'm happy with it when I'm on the lakes and rivers (smaller than the Columbia, anyway).  I'd use it in bays, too.

But I only trust the known capacity and discharge rate of an SLA when I'm out in the saltwater.