I excitedly picked up the very first 3-piece Etain kayak yesterday. After it was discovered that it would be extremely expensive to ship a single kayak out to Russia for my forthcoming paddle to Japan with Sarah Outen, I called Valley kayaks up at pretty short notice and asked if there was any chance that they could make a 3-piece kayak for me to use on the trip. Jason called back the next day to say they could make me a 17.5 Etain.

Valley dropped it off at Surflines yesterday, with a delivery of kayaks. Barry took our one piece Etain and we braved the torrential rain to have a play around with them in Llyn Padarn. As you can see from the photo above, it’s been raining quite a lot this last week, and water levels are high!

I was really pleased with the kayak. It’s very pretty, which of course is very important! I like the red colour, and the joins between the 3parts are very neat and barely noticeable. After playing around practicing various rolls for about an hour the hatches were all still bone dry which was a great relief. The kayak is obviously heavier than a regular Etain because it has 2 bulk heads & 4 bolts at each join, but it didn’t feel any heavier than other 3-piece kayaks I have used in the past.

The skeg control is in the stern piece of the kayak & I was worried that it would be hard to reach, but actually it was fine (on flat water anyway!).

By the time we got off the water it was 7.30pm and we were VERY happy to get changed and drive a few hundred yards for a ‘pizza and a pint’ with some friends. This included Marcus Demuth who has a similar skeg on his 3-piece Nordkapp and assured me it’s easy to use in rougher seas. He warned me that the biggest problem would be that when I get back and try to adjust the skeg on a different kayak by reaching behind me!

I’m also using new paddles from Mitchell blades (fantastic high quality paddles which are made locally to me in Chester). For the last 2 years I’ve been using the ‘Atlantis’ blades (comparable to Lendals’ Archipelago blades), but I recently got some ‘Bombora’ blades (comparable to Lendals’ Kinetic Touring blades). Both are a lovely shade of blue! I really like the new paddle so now I have to decide which one will be my spare paddle & which will power me to Japan!? I think I”ll start with the Bombora!

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