![]() The Bay ST tracked reasonably well across the water, although the fact that it’s so lightweight and relatively short means the wind does push it around quite a bit, and you need to correct your course by adapting your stroke when this happens, because there’s no rudder. Conditions were calm on the day in Lyme Bay, although there was a reasonable swell once I was out past the rocks of Beer Head. I chose to take my test boat out on the sea, from my local beach in Seaton, East Devon, and I paddled it to Branscombe and back, which is a total trip of around 6 miles/10km. Super lightweight and easy to carry, the Bay ST can be paddled in a variety of conditions, from lakes and rivers to reasonably challenging seas. Like all Oru kayaks, the Bay ST comes flat-packed in easy-to-carry ‘bag’, which is actually an integral part of the craft’s hull (meaning that, once you have finished assembling it, you don’t need to leave anything behind at the beach or store a cumbersome bag in the body of the boat). The design of the Bay ST is based on the original origami-style boat that propelled Oru Kayak into the water in the first place. Thankfully, the Oru Bay ST is an excellent product – one of the best folding kayaks available – and when I tested it out for the very first time on a busy beach on a sunny day in Devon recently, the crowd of onlookers ended up crowing about how impressive the kayak was, rather than giggling at me. Rocking up at the seaside with a large bag, and then performing an apparent magic trick by unfolding said bag to create a full-size sea kayak, is the kind of behaviour that attracts a fair bit of attention – so when you finally launch, you really want the boat to hold water and not make you a laughing stock.
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