Can Watersports Gear Be Travel-worthy?

If you enjoy getting out on the water on a kayak or stand-up paddleboard, can you really do either if you’re not by the water? If you don’t have a huge SUV with a luggage rack?

I’m posting this from the Outdoor Retailer Show in Salt Lake City, where I’m getting ready to check out what’s new in travel gear for next year. But first I went to the demo day, where manufacturers let buyers and us media folk try out their new products.

Amongst a sea of paddleboards that all looked pretty similar to a non-expert like me, and a lot of kayaks that would require a trailer to take anywhere, I went looking for what could be put in a car trunk or checked onto an airplane.

The most obvious solutions are to go small or go inflatable. I tried out a few short kayaks that were a lot of fun to paddle around with. Fast and easy to maneuver. The inflatable ones can go longer though, still packing down small enough to go into a suitcase sized bag for your car trunk (like the one I have from Advanced Elements) or into a duffel bag that can be checked on an airplane. That’s taken in to the design specs, with nearly all of them coming in at under 50 pounds.

I went out on the lake with one from Innova (pictured here) and checked out a few others from Sea Eagle. Their lightness means you can potentially get blown around a little more on a windy day, but the well-made ones handle as well as a conventional fiberglass kayak.

If you’re into stand-up paddleboarding but aren’t by the water, you can either rent one every time you go out or haul one on a roof rack somewhere. Again though, there’s an inflatable alternative. That board on the left, which was surprisingly stable when I took it out for a spin, packs into the bag on the right.

Some companies are exploring some alternate technologies though. These cool Snap Kayaks from Sweden come from the same part of the world that gave us Ikea and Legos—with a similar concept. The pieces of the kayak come apart for transport, but snap together to form a regular polyetheline kayak on the water.

Another company that just launched via a Kickstarter campaign is about to start selling their Origami Kayak. It performs much better than it looks like it would when on the water (that’s it in the photo at the bottom), but on land you just fold the thing up and carry it to your car like you would a beach chair!

The only downside to all this portability is that none of it comes cheap. You’re generally going to have to put four digits after the dollar sign to buy most of these items, or $700 and up on sale for the lowest-end ones. Like skiing, golf, or mountain biking, the equipment for your passion is not going to come cheap.