murone wrote:
Swfinatic wrote:
Congrats on your Hobie and welcome to the forum!
If I can make a recommendation- take your Hobie out a couple of times before you add that seat. If sitting up high is what you're after than go ahead but it completely changes how the kayak functions and it changes the angle that your legs are at when you pedal (for the worse). A seat pad in my opinion is the better route.
Thanks for the advice! I haven't been able to spend time in one with the higher seat yet...since they added that seat into an only slightly modified version of the same hull design, I assume a retrofitted one would be pretty similar in feel. Are you just suggesting that even the new design is inferior for covering water to the leaned back one? Or that my retrofit would end up different from the Hobie implementation?
I do have to say, based my research in other parts of this forum I was expecting the old seat to be awful, but in my couple of trips (admittedly no longer than ~2 hrs each) I've been content with whats there.
By adding the higher seat you would be changing how the kayak is designed to perform. Changes how it tracks, changes stability, changes the angle which you control the rudder, increases wind cock, etc. Once you raise the seat at that height everything is out of sorts. AND as you have found out the lower seat isn't as bad as some make it out to be. We're all different in terms of what is comfortable to us I get that but if the original seat works or even having to add a cushion to the original seat I recommend keeping it that way. Not to mention if you ever want to sell it having the raised seat will make it much harder to sell for reasons I've mentioned.