Crescent Kayaks: Whats The Difference

what's up everybody dan here from the headwaters channel and behind me i have three crescent kayaks they've got the ultralight the brand new ck1 and the light tackle now i've seen a lot of buzz online and a lot of questions from the audience asking what's the difference what's the one for me why would i buy the ck1 versus the ultralight so today i'm going to kind of compare them line them up and hopefully answer some of those questions if i don't get to your question leave it below in the comment section and i will do my best to get to it later so here it is the brand new ck1 you can expect a video review of this thing coming out very soon on my channel but because we're at headwaters adventure company today and they had all three on the floor i thought it'd be a good time to just compare and contrast these three boats so let's just start off here with a little bit of stats uh to my left i've got the ultralight which comes in at 49 pounds 10 foot 2 inches long and 30 inches wide the overall capacity they're calling it 350 pounds which seems pretty generous because i know for myself at 220 i definitely fill this boat out and anything much bigger than that and you start to feel a little tippy now when they're talking capacities again that's the overall weight of the paddler and the gear you can bring so there's a big difference of having gear down inside the boat versus a big paddle up on top of the boat i would say if you're above 200 pounds you really ought to be bumping up to the ck1 okay so the ck1 comes in at 60 pounds total weight 11 foot long so just a touch longer but 34 inches wide four inches additional width and a ton more buoyancy look at those two boats side by side you can really tell when you get them uh next to each other so again designed for a smaller paddler this one's going to be a lot more efficient if you're 150 pounds and you're gonna be going out and moving around by yourself smaller lighter it's going to cut through the water nicer but if you're a bigger person or you want to bring a dog or fishing gear that's where the ck1 comes in a little bit higher capacity it's probably going to be a touch slower but still 60 pounds that's a throw and go kayak a kayak you can throw on top of your roof you can put in the back of your suv but still is very full featured the last boat over here is a crescent light tackle this one comes in at 12 foot four inches 37 inches wide 75 total pounds and overall capacity of 450 so we've got 350 400 450 now these two i would say are probably pretty darn close if you look at the overall volume of these two kayaks it's not too dissimilar but what you get when you get a little bit more length is you get better paddling performance i should qualify that i shouldn't say better pattern performance better tracking ease of paddling if you're just moving across the water in a flat water lake or in any sort of wind you know the longer boat is going to track better it's going to feel like it has more glide it's going to do what you tell it to now that same boat in the river is going to take a little bit more time to come around than say the ck1 again shorter length is going to make a boat feel more maneuverable you can see they both share that real bulbous nose which means it does great in waves and chop things like that this boat is going to ride high stay nice and dry so very similar boats i would say just kind of depending on what your paddling ambitions are is what you should go with other differences here is in the front hatch department on the ultra light you have the twist lock front hatch with the bungee system so the bungee is a place where you can store stuff underneath and then this little guy is a twist opening hatch and then that guy pops off and there you go internal access to your kayak not a lot of room enough for like you know a dry bag with a towel change of clothes things like that but it does give you access over here on the ck1 you get this nice tank well with the cover i'm going to go over the cover in more detail but for now we'll just compare but yeah completely new idea um you know a new concept as opposed to having a hatch now you have a built-in tank well on the light tackle over here you get this huge front hatch which gives you a ton of access to the front of this boat one of the things i love about it is if you're going to do camping if you're going to take stuff look at all that room for gear there's just cavernous in there and the longer boat gives you a ton of volume up there to put stuff in now i will say from firsthand experiences this hatch having a single seal is not the most watertight if you're taking it in waves so what i did to address that is i actually added a second seal that went around here and that really helps with the second seal it presses it down and gives it a lot more watertight seal i think that's something crescent should look at other differences in the boat is you know let's look at the cockpits here these two boats are very very similar as far as space in the cockpit this one they added a little flat mount here because they had a little more room they took it out on this one just to give more space in the cockpit things like cup holders these are simple they're molded in but you got a spot for a water bottle or a now jean on either side there they get additional storage here along the side for like tackle baits whatever paddle parks on either side that's one of the things you guys mentioned on the light tackle it doesn't have a great paddle part system so they added that to the ck1 additional storage compartment here again another water bottle or i know a lot of guys will put like their soft plastic so just things that you can slide in there the bungees are really simple but add a lot of functionality to the boat on all the boats they get that tank well pad in the back that keeps your gear riding nice and quiet if you have a dog with you it prevents the dog from slipping around now with all their boats they do a little bit of track system here in addition to the mighty mount so you can add rod holders you could add a camera mount um you know really any of the accessories that are available for tracks you now have lots of mounting options in a really good tank well for an 11 foot kayak it's impressive how much room they were able to pack into this tank well they did that by using the double carry handles and then squaring off the stern right at the back so it's kind of a trans amount but it also just extends that tank well a ton again if we look over here at the light tackle very similar even more room obviously it's a foot and a half longer so of course you've got more room um but a very very generous size tank on the light tackle better for hauling a load better for going the distance uh probably my favorite kayak out of the bunch although i'm excited to hop in the ck1 and give it a paddle here on the river and see how it does and then the ultralight i love this boat too like if i was going to buy a pair of boats for my wife and i you know i would probably get the light tackle or the ck1 at 220 pounds and my wife's only 140 pounds so i would get her something like the ultralight because it's just going to paddle better for her size she's not going to need to push around the extra bulk of a ck1 when this is going to offer more than enough stability and be lighter to handle off the water all right last thing let's circle back on this front hatch i don't want this to be a full walk through the ck1 but it is something that's very different compared to the other two boats so uh let's have a look this was a departure from what they've done in the past you know they've always had some sort of a front hatch system on their boats but the new crew tanum did not you know obviously it's a tandem and they created a space in the front of the tandem that would work for a cover like this so i think they took that same idea that they learned and applied it to this new cover i really like that they used a nice waterproof material it's got a zipper pocket for things you want to have access to or organized throughout the day it's got a paddle part so if you wanted to store your paddle while you're fishing it's got a place to just slide that right in there and then i also like it's kind of on spring so you can really jam a bunch of stuff in there for example here's like a 23 liter ice meal backpack style cooler this thing could just slide right there in the front so pretty good sized bag that would fit under there and then it's on a bungee system so these will just stretch out hook on there you go so like a backpack cooler anything like that can just fit right underneath here you still have that zipper pocket very cool system and if you're using a dry bag or like this is a dry cooler that's going to keep your gear nice and dry even if waves are washing over the front so i think it's a very smart thing and it also prevents additional you know points of entry for water to intrude in your boat so i like this setup very cool now let's take a look at the whole designs because this is really where the rubber meets the road and where crescent i feel like really separates themselves from a lot of the other kayak companies they use a really unique hole design it's got i shouldn't say that it's not that unique it's kind of just a forgotten old-school hole design that really really works you see that keel if you follow my finger here runs all the way to the back all the way into the stern and really deep keel there but if you look at the side it's got a ton of rocker profile so a ton of banana shape so although it's got this extended keel that goes all the way in the back of the boat it also has a little bit of that banana shape that's going to help this thing ride up and over swell it's going to help keep the cockpit of the boat very very dry it's going to provide a ton of secondary stability but still a playful primary stability so i just actually watched james the owner chris and kayaks walk through video and he gave us a shout out so thank you james we appreciate that but talking about stability profiles of both it's not all about what is the most stable it's what's stable enough for me and what's going to work for my needs and really more of like i need stable and needed to not flip me over but i also need performance we've kind of evolved past that point of is it stable and really focused on is it stable enough a boat that a beginner can get in and have fun and really that goes for any of these boats a boat a beginner can get in have fun but then also progress and do a little bit more with your recreational set on top i mean these aren't like big ocean-going sea kayaks or anything of that nature but a playful recreational kayak that can grow with you so anyways you guys that's going to do it for me today if you are in the writing area i'm hanging out at headwaters adventure company today uh they have a brand new spot this is their new shop i'll give you just a quick tour they're right on the sacramento river if you want to come down check out boats if you want a demo schedule ahead of time kind of supply is limited both are coming in but they're going out as fast as they can get them very excited for brian and the crew here at headwaters adventure all right guys until next time this is dan from headwaters wishing you happy paddling we'll see you on the next one

Channel: Headwaters Kayak

Views: 43,410

Keywords: headwaters, kayak, crescent kayaks, lite tackle, fishing kayak, ck1, venture, ultralite, comparison, what the difference, paddling, crescent

Id: 8HSnoScLxPs

Length: 10min 18sec (618 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 15 2021