A Whitewater Dilemma

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The sport of whitewater kayaking is an exciting and adventurous one. The feeling of freedom and fluid movement when paddling is unparalleled by that of any other sport, except maybe skydiving. There are many decisions to be made when first getting into paddling, namely what kind of boat to purchase. This decision can be difficult to make since there are hundreds of boat models to choose. However, there are two different categories of boats to choose from that help narrow down the decision process. The two genres of boats are play boats and creek boats. There are two other types of boats called river runners and squirt boats, but play boats and creek boats are the two most popular among kayakers. Play boats are shorter in length, and have a flat bottom called a planning hull; this is useful for stability when surfing holes (a hole means a particular feature on a whitewater river where water flows over a rock or boulder and causes the water to recirculate in a way that it will stop and hold rafts or kayaks on the downstream side; when this occurs it is known as surfing) because there is more surface area on the bottom of the boat. A creek boat is longer, between eight and ten feet long, and has much more volume than the smaller play boat. Creek boats are used for more extreme kayaking such as going over waterfalls and paddling steep narrow creeks which would be to dangerous to run in the smaller play boat. While each boat has its different intended uses for paddling, a play boat gives the paddlers more options to do what they want on the Ledford 2 river as well as more locations to paddle, making it, in my opinion, the better of the two boats. Creek boats are the complete opposites of play boats. They are typically used for a type of boating called creeking which refers to the steep creeks they descend. Creeking is much more dangerous than freestyle

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