More on the W Kayak Riding-Over Position
The older W kayak models enable sitting in the Riding-Over position outside the cockpit – on their hull tips. The New, 2008 design offers to ride over the cockpit as well, due to its lower spray deflector.
Riding-over is basically a static position offering you to dip your feet in the water in case you want to cool down, and try yet another position in case you feel like changing. 
It’s practical for fishing, and since you can ride over the hull tips it enables establishing a bigger distance between two fishermen working from the same W kayak.
You can paddle in this position, as well as correct the kayak’s location.
Tags: fishing kayak, kayak fishing, riding over, tandem fishing kayak, tandem kayaking
June 4th, 2008 at
Is it hard to switch from being in the cockpit to riding over it, or over the hulls ? and how easy is it to get back in?
caveman
June 4th, 2008 at
Can children ride over the w kayak?
Paul
June 4th, 2008 at
It’s easy in the 2008 model.
Children can easily ride over the W kayak, and it’s even easier for them to paddle in this position because their feet are not dragging in the water as much as adults’ feet are.
June 4th, 2008 at
Sometimes it’s easy to forget this boat is just 25 inches wide. It’s about as wide as a pony.
Mike H.
June 4th, 2008 at
I just read an article titled “When Nature Calls Answer” on Paddling dot net about a technique for relieving oneself on the water (number two), which involved having a paddling partner brace your sit-in kayak while you somehow inch out of the cockpit and straddle the ends of your kayak and that of your partner so as to enable you to do your business in the gap between them. Presumably there’s very deep, very cold water involved to necessitate such a precarious maneuver, and one would hope very little wave action. I am compelled to observe, however, that in my experience such conditions usually do involve waves.
There are obvious safety, privacy, athletic and aesthetic issues involved, not to mention environmental concerns. The article had a picture of a fully clothed kayaker in a wet suit demonstrating this maneuver while his partner braced him and averted his eyes. The need for a bag or other container for waste is referenced, although this is not shown, and it’s hard to imagine how someone desperately suspending him or herself between two bobbing kayaks would hold one; never mind perform the intended personal function, not to mention the subsequent clean up, dressing, and return maneuvers. Indeed the mind, or at any rate my mind, can’t even encompass how one would get out of one’s wet suit, or having succeeded in doing so then exit the cockpit with it around one’s ankles, never mind accomplish the rest of the maneuver. The only consolation would be the very real possibility of a grand prize on America’s Funniest Home Videos.
I really don’t want to see a picture of anyone doing this on your website, or anyone elses, but I infer from your pictures of the riding over the hull tips position that it could be easily and safely performed solo on a W boat, possibly even more securely while sitting side saddle. If one anticipates such a necessity in the course of his or her kayaking adventures I would think it a compelling reason to purchase your boat without regard to any of its other attractive features.
June 4th, 2008 at
I stopped visiting that website years ago, after I realized I was bored. They keep repeating themselves and argue about the same senseless questions such as “canoe or kayak”…
It’s as if they got stuck somewhere in the eighties or nineties.
April
June 4th, 2008 at
Their website is no longer relevant. Its format is antiquated and the content repetitive and moldy.
Mike
June 4th, 2008 at
It’s one of those “portal” things left over from the roaring nineties… whenever I visit that site I feel like I’m watching a documentary on the history channel.
Boring!
June 4th, 2008 at
I read that thing, and it’s a load of [edited], if I may say so,
K
June 4th, 2008 at
Sorry, you may not say so on this blog…:-D
June 4th, 2008 at
I first visited that website a couple of years ago and it struck me as being some kind of relic from the past. I didn’t realize so many people knew about it.
matt
June 4th, 2008 at
never been there –what are u people talking about??
June 4th, 2008 at
A visit to paddling.net feels like a weird trip back in time in a time machine… weird vibes—
Dave
June 4th, 2008 at
OK people, how about we move on from the past back to the present?
I’d like to remind everyone that this blog post is about the Riding-Over W kayak position.
Yoav
June 4th, 2008 at
Sometimes I think of the w as a kind of time machine that takes me to the future (
)
June 4th, 2008 at
The future of paddling!
BTW, the riding-over position looks pretty stable – Is it as stable as riding the saddle?
June 4th, 2008 at
The Riding-Over position feels stable once you get used to it.
So far we’ve tried it only on flat and slow moving water, so it’s too early to say how stable it is in moving water.
I think the regular Riding position is stabler though, but I could be wrong, and the Riding-Over position would prove to be as stable after we get more experience with it.
June 23rd, 2008 at
Nice Site!