Activity - DIY Packraft

mttgilbert replied 2 years, 4 months ago

is there a way to tell between the two batches? I got a kit six months ago and haven’t put it together yet. Should I just to put it together with Pex out of an abundance of caution?
- Matt (Admin) replied 2 years, 4 months ago
  
  I don’t think there’s an easy way to tell, but the stiffener is something that you insert and remove each time you use the packraft, so you don’t really need to worry about it beforehand – if it’s not stiff enough to keep the skirt on when you get to that point then you can replace it.
BigFatRick replied 2 years, 3 months ago

Thanks for addressing this issue, Matt. I found that with 1/2″ PEX-b for combing, the spray skirt stays fairly well attached to the spray deck through class III. However, it’s still far from dry in that boat. As my body rotates while paddling through whitewater, the waist shock-cord tends to drop down my waist until it sits quite low. Water then pools on the skirt and slowly drips through my shirt and into the cockpit. After running my local 2 mile stretch of whitewater, I had 50-70lbs of water in the boat. So while it won’t negate the need for a drysuit in cold conditions, it does at least prevent having to get out & dump the boat after every rapid. I think my next adjustment will be adding shoulder straps to the skirt to keep it higher on my waist. After that, I may look at aquasealing the holes along the deck where the tube-fabric-joining strips prevent a seal, as you suggest in the tutorial.
- Uncle Fred replied 2 years, 2 months ago
  
  I found the same issue with the skirt. You can correct this by adding adjustable straps to your skirt. These will prevent the skirt from gradually shifting down. I also found I needed to add additional fabric panels to offer more ‘give’ to the skirt, allowing me to shift around in the boat a bit more without putting tension on the skirt.