Excursion (Rudder Ready)

My husband and I have owned this boat for 10 years and would not trade it for anything. We have had it all over Virginia, NC, Florida and just recently paddled it in Puget Sound. As a tandem it glides smoothly through the water with no side to side sway like a single kayak. We usually paddle about 4 hours or so with no discomfort. We need to replace the netting this year and the covers on the hatches are getting worn, but it's 10 years old!

The Excursion saved my life many times. Last year I used to cross the Congo-DRC. I paddled down the Lukenie river with this thing (more than 2000 km's). You can look this up on www.bobongo.be. It is extremely stable and fast enough to stay clear of hippos and crocks. After this trip I got a job for the WWF in the mouth of the Congo river and I used this boat to monitor poaching and illegal fishing in the local mangroves reservation. It was stable enough to paddle the Congo river and that river can produce waves of more than 2 metres in the middle. I'm back in Belgium now and I had to leave my Excursion behind in the DRC but after having used it for more than 2 years in the Congolese Heart of Darkness it was basically unscratched. One night I left it behind in a creek and next morning I found it back with a boa constrictor that was taking a sun bath on the cover of one of the seats. I'm looking into the possibility now to organize another expedition on the Lomami river and I'm considering to buy a Posseidon, a boat that is a bit faster. I purchased this boat in the kayak shop in Belgium. Pieter, the owner, is a good friend but he didn't sell me junk. If you're looking for a good boat buy this one.

This is a bus! Not a kayak. It is huge! I considered buying one, so took one for a ride in a club. Even though it was new at the club, there are a lot of little problems with supposedly water-tight cells that leak, rudder that is not straight etc. But the problem is that it is so huge. I mean wide. Difficult to lean, slow. And almost impossible to roll, especially if one of the 2 paddlers has a problem, as the two cockpits are actually one huge cockpit. Yes! they are connected! so if one floods, that's it.
Leave it for beginners (it's almost impossible to overturn too) with extra 2000$

I don't own an excursion, but my wife and I rented one for a ten day trip through the finger lakes in upstate New York. Our first reaction was disbelief that 9000 cubic inches of dry storage space could be so small--It sounds like a lot but looks like a joke! We had camping/B&B/hotel reservations for the next week + all up Cayuga lake and down Seneca Lake with no other vehicle at our disposal so we had to make it work. We spent lots of time paring down our already minimal gear, but when we went to pack the boat, we ended up taking most of that stuff after all. It holds a LOT more than it looks like it will. Not to say you don'thave to pack light, but we got a large family-sized tent in an XLong dry bag (my wife is clausterphobic), a large dry bag of clothes, and a medium dry bag of toiletries, etc. in the rear hatch. That last we had to put in the hold empty, then pack and close, but we made it fit. I was able to fit a not-full large dry bag of food behind the rear backrest. The front hold was just big enough to hold our two synthetic down sleeping bags in an large dry bag (again we had to stuff them in after inserting the empty bag into the hold) and our lasso chain lock to boot. We strapped a deck bag in front of the front cockpit, had our water bottles, fuel, paddle float, and rain gear between us, and our sleeping pads lashed to the top behind the rear cockpit. In short, we were able to make 10 days of gear (with about 4 days of food and one day's water) fit without putting any significant weight on top or leaving anything behind. The drawback is that it takes about a half-hour to pack up each morning. Nonetheless, we were happy in the end with the capacity. The comfort was decent. The boat is designed well with well-placed thigh pads, adjustable back rest, and no bulkhead between the cockpits so both people can get down and do a near-full stretch from time to time as needed. Our chief complaint was in the one area we thought would be the most solid based on other reviews, that of performance. One Caveat, my wife and I both have some very limited experience paddling, so we may not be the best to judge, but even after an additional 10 days perfecting our technique, we simply could not make the boat track, even in calm, still water, for more than very short distances. I may be wrong here, but I would definately test paddle this boat to see if you have the same problem. Of course, using the rudder solves this problem, and we weren't particularly concerened about the slight loss of speed resultant from doing so, but the finger lakes are often very shallow and the rudder would consantly be catching plants and dragging them around, making things considerably more difficult. There were probalby three full days and all sorts of shorter periods where the conditions were calm enough to be without a rudder, but we always had to use one. Otherwise, the boat performed well. As you might expect of a tandem, we were always stable, not too close together to paddle efficiently, and well balanced. The boat is heavy as sin with that much gear in it, to the point where my wife could not pick up her half of it to get it on shore sometimes. Others have commented that the cockpit is somewhat narrow. I don't know how it compares, but I am 6'2" and 225 pounds (pretty damn big) and I didn't have to squeeze in or anything. It was a narrow clear, but a clear nonetheless. Have fun!

Okay - go ahead and call me crazy... I took the Excursion through the Upper Guadalupe (Berghiem to the State Park) at about 550cfs (class II to low III). I was the only one in the group not in a whitewater boat - but this thing handled it really well. At 17 feet long don't expect it to be catching micro eddies and surfing in holes (although I got big smiles when I got it to surf). The point is that handled rough water exceptionally well. I've also paddled it tandem on flat water now - it's stable, fast, and easy to rudder steer (you don't need to worry about controlling the strokes).

I'm still not crazy about the 36x18 cockpits - 34x20 would be more to my liking. The rivers around here have lots of strainers, so I removed the safety deck line - if/when I go in the ocean I'll put it back on.

I'm still interested in getting a Prijon Yukon Expedition (it's what I was looking for when I found this). If it's basically a solo version of this boat then I'm sure I'll like it. If you're paddling solo without a bunch of gear then the Excursion is overkill - plus it's 85lbs are a real bear to carry after a long day paddling!