Making a used boat comfortable and dry

A second-hand kayak is usually sound and almost never comfortable. The previous owner either upgraded the seat and kept it, or never upgraded it because they only used the boat twice. Either way the thing you bought floats correctly and sits badly, and the fixes are cheap relative to what you already spent.

Diagnose the discomfort before you buy anything

“The seat is uncomfortable” is two completely different complaints with two completely different price tags, and people routinely buy the wrong solution.

If your backside goes numb after 45 minutes, that is a pressure problem. You want a cushion. A gel pad like the Skwoosh — 13 ounces, an inch thick, with a non-skid base — sits on the seat you already own and solves it for a fraction of the price of a seat system. The non-skid base is the part that matters: cheap cushions slide out from under you on the first boat wake.

If your lower back aches and you find yourself slouching, that is a support problem, and no cushion in the world will fix it. You want a seat with a real back. The Surf to Summit GTS Elite publishes an 18-inch back panel with four independent tension locks, two for lumbar and two for forward lean. That separation is the useful part — most seats give you one strap and a shrug.

One interaction to watch: a tall seat back and a high-backed PFD fight each other. If you are adding a big seat, you want a vest with a mesh lower back, which is exactly what the paddle-specific PFDs in the PFD section provide.

Dry storage, and what “waterproof” actually claims

Dry bags are where marketing language does the most damage, so read the rating rather than the adjective.

Earth Pak publishes an IPX6 rating on its roll-top bags. IPX6 means powerful water jets from any direction — rain, spray, a wave over the deck. It does not mean immersion. Roll-top closures keep water out when they are rolled at least three times and clipped, and they are not submarine hatches. If your phone absolutely must survive a capsize, that is a different product category and a different budget.

The other thing to look at is where the bag will fail, which is never the seam and always the base. Dry bags get dragged across concrete ramps and gravel, not sunk. That is why the SealLine Baja’s published construction — 19 oz vinyl sides on a 30 oz bottom — is a more meaningful spec than a headline rating. Heavier where it scrapes.

Scupper plugs: the accessory that is wrong half the time

If you have a sit-on-top, it has holes through the hull. Those holes are called scuppers and they are a feature: water that comes over the side drains straight back out. Plugging them keeps you drier on flat water on a calm day.

Plugging them also keeps water in when a wave puts it there. On moving water or in surf, scupper plugs turn a self-draining boat into a bathtub, and that is a genuine safety issue rather than a preference. Buy them if you paddle flat water and dislike a wet backside. Take them out for anything else. Harmony’s published fit range is 1 inch to 1 3/8 inch scupper holes, so measure yours before ordering — there is no universal size.

What to fix, and what to leave alone

Used polyethylene hulls come with cosmetic damage and it is mostly irrelevant. Deep gouges that have not gone through are fine. Surface scratches from years of being dragged up ramps are fine. Sun fade is cosmetic, although heavy UV exposure over many years does make plastic more brittle, so a chalky, badly faded hull is worth a closer look than a shiny one.

What is worth attention: soft spots, cracks that pass right through, deformation from being stored badly on a rack or strapped down with a ratchet, and any hardware that has pulled through the deck. We go through the checks on what to fix on a used kayak.

Finally, a bilge pump. If your boat has a cockpit rather than scuppers, there is no automatic way for water to leave it, and hand bailing with a cut-down bottle is slow enough to matter. Attwood publishes up to 8 gallons per minute for its hand pump — an order of magnitude above the small kayak-specific pumps, and volume is the entire point. Buy it, then make sure it lives under a deck bungee rather than in a hatch. A bilge pump you cannot reach while sitting in a swamped boat is decoration.