As a rookie paddler, I really like this kayak! It's stable, tracks well, and has a good amount of storage. My husband and I both have one and recently took them down a 7 mile stretch of the Platte River in Colorado. This is a pretty calm section of the river but there were more than a dozen boat chutes of varying size/intensity that we encountered. The kayaks handled really well on these - we never felt unstable or at risk of capsizing on any of them. The boats did take on a lot of water on several of the chutes but they are fairly easy to drain. My only complaint is that the storage compartments fill up with water pretty easily and the "dry bag" feature in the back doesn't really keep anything dry. I would recommend buying some after-market dry bags to store things in the back of the kayak if you're worried about them getting wet. Otherwise a great choice all around!
