Perception Avatar 15.5

When I started kayaking last year I never would have anticipated being the owner of three kayaks in just a year, but here I am just having purchased a third kayak.  Over the past couple months I have found that I seem to be outgrowing my 11 foot Necky.  I still love my Necky and it is perfect for small winding rivers and trips under 10 miles.   But for trips over 10 miles I find that I am reaching the limit of my little boat.  I also have been really wanting to get into the ocean and my Necky is just not the right boat for that type of trip.

So over the past couple months I have been scouring Craigslist looking for a nice, inexpensive, used sea kayak.  My criteria was something around $500, over 14 feet in length, with a skeg or rudder and generally something that I could grow into.  Last week there was an ad for a Perception Avatar, I looked up the specs and read the reviews of the boat and it seemed like it would be a great fit for me.  It met all of my criteria and was being offered at a good price so I headed over to take a look and ended up coming home with a new boat.

From what I can tell the Avatar family of kayaks were manufactured from 2003 through 2008.  They include a 16 foot composite version, a 15 foot 10 inch plastic version and a 15 foot 7 inch plastic version (which I purchased).

The specs on the boat are as follows:

Length: 15' - 7"
Width: 23 1/4"
Weight: 54 lbs
Cockpit: 34" x 19"

According to Perception, the Avatar was designed with the Greenland style in mind and reflects progressive thinking by our touring boat designers.  Brent Reitz was very instrumental in the design of the Avatar.    The Avatar features a multi-chine hull design that relies on its graceful sleek hull design for turning rather than a rudder system.

First Impressions:

I took the boat out for for my first trip this past Saturday.  I wanted to paddle waters that I was familiar with so I headed down to the Merrimack River in Methuen for the 10 mile downstream paddle to Haverhill.  My first disappointment with this kayak is that I found that my kayak cart will not fit into either the bow or stern hatch.  I was able to easily fit this cart into the stern hatch of my Necky.  The stern compartment is taken up by the skeg box and the bow is fairly shallow making it impossible to fit anything tall inside.  I believe this is due to the Greenland style design.

Getting into the water I immediately noticed that this kayak does not have the initial stability that the rec kayaks that I usually paddle do.  The boat felt pretty twitchy as I was heading out and took a couple miles to get used to.  I was also paddling into a pretty stiff wind which was pushing me around more than I expected it to.  The wind shortly settled down and I settled into a nice rhythm.  I could tell that this was much faster than my 11 foot necky.  I could get it up to speed faster and it has a really good glide to it.  I had to make some seat and foot adjustments along the way to get comfortable but once I was locked in I found the boat to be very comfortable.  Especially the seat which has a great Geltech seat pad. 

One aspect that will take some getting used to is that I could not position my feet vertically on the foot braces as I am accustomed to.  The bow is so narrow that I needed to angle my feet outward in a V to fit comfortably.  When reading reviews of the Avatar one of the complaints about this boat is if you wear over a size 12 shoe your feet won't fit.  Not an issue for me though as I wear a size 8.

I was hoping to try out the skeg on this trip but the mechanism is a bit sticky and needs to manually be pulled up and down.  I will need to do a little maintenance on it in the off season. I was not sure if I was going to feel too confined with the much smaller cockpit in this boat, made even smaller by the thigh pads.  But I quickly got used to it as I was able to lock my self in and really feel connected to the kayak.  Before I knew it I was at my take out in Haverhill and I noticed it took me quite a bit less time to get there than when I took this trip just a couple weeks ago.  I checked my GPS when I got home and found that the Avatar is significantly faster than my Necky Manitou.

I last paddled this route in my Necky on August 26th.  It took me 2 hours and 23 minutes with and average speed of 3.9 mph.  This past Saturday in my Avatar it took me 1 hour and 46 minutes with and average speed of 5.2 mph.

Overall I am very happy with my Perception Avatar 15.5.  It is a very fast boat that will allow me to get out on longer trips and into the ocean.  This is a boat that I will be able to grow into.  I am really looking forward to longer trips and my first trip into the ocean.