C-Forum

A club member is parting with some older boats: an Eskimo Kendo and an Eskimo Salto. I can’t find much info and these, and I’m wondering if either would make a good C1 river runner. Any tips on the conversion?

I'm 5'10/177 cm tall, and 72 kg/159 pounds.

Eskimo is known to have good Plastic.

You should search this forum for Eskimo and then search the results for Kendo as well as Salto.

I just sold my Salto kayak- replaced it with a Stomper 90. I think the Salto would make a bad C1. It has poor enough secondary stability as a kayak. I don't know your size, but creekers have gone big, and for good reason. It is night and day staying on top of features as opposed to trying to punch through them. The Salto has narrow goalposts- difficult to take it off a line. It is a very poor surfer as well. I liked the boat for some time, however, time and technology moves on. I would say keep an eye out for a Nomad or a Burn as a conversion creeker. There are plenty of them around. If you've got the dough, I certainly recommend the Stomper 90- best creek boat I have ever paddled. The new Pyranha 9R looks pretty sweet too.

Kendo was a playboat in it's day - kind of old fashioned now but migrated from playboat to river runner quite nicely for a long time (in Europe at least)

I've only actually paddled one a couple of times (as kayaks). The time I can remember was on the Etive in really high conditions - triple falls had become 2 falls and we launched between them as the towback on the first (2 usually) was heinous. For some reason I looked at the river, and at my Glide and wanted to get on but didn't want to get on in that.... Only 1 other member of group did want to get on (plus a guy from another group) so I had a choice of boats, and decided that since a lot of the guys were using Kendos on hard stuff it would be a good choice....
I was wrong! OK it was not the best place to get used to a new boat but it felt really wobbly compared to my Glide or my Topo (neither known for feeling stable) - undoubtedly it was stable enough but it felt all wrong to me! I ran triple 3 and made it down the small rapids to Letterbox but was having an absolute nightmare with it - I thought I was going to fall in the whole time. When we scouted Letterbox I decided to grab my throwline and run down the bank to provide safety cover for the others - the entire run is only 1km and they would have to keep stopping to scout falls. It was pretty tiring but I did manage to keep up. They ran a fall which normally has to be portaged because of a shallow landing and finally egressed before right angle falls, the 25 footer, which was too much at the level.
I was gutted, those levels are rare and being there at those levels with people I would trust to run it even rarer. I should have just manned up and got on in the Glide!

I'm not sure if that helps you very much, all I'm saying is, that although it was a popular boat and I have many friends that would run grade 5 in it (kayak) I really didn't get on with the Kendo and felt it lacked stability where I was used to having some. I probably didn't give it a fair test though!

Salto, again friends used to use them, but as mentioned all have upgraded to 'better' creek boats now. I never paddled one.

Thanks for the responses about these two boats. I've decided to pass on this opportunity and keep my fingers crossed for a better boat in terms of paddlability and convertibility.