Wednesday, January 23, 2013

New "High Rise" seat from Wilderness

I want to take a moment to comment on my new seat for the Ride 135  Called the Air Pro Advanced Elevated Seating - or "High Rise Seat" for short.

Here's a video from wilderness:



My observations:

I ordered mine from Kayak Fishing Supplies I buy from these guys all the time and they take good care of me.  I had a few hiccups in the delivery but they were factory issues and the folks at Wilderness made it right.  I always appreciate error free customer service but what tells you the most about a company is how they handle their mistakes - Wilderness was top notch!

So the seat looks pretty but what about real life?

I broke one of my own rules and put new hardware in my boat for a tournament.  The first time I had this seat on the water was a pre-dawn "shotgun" launch at a tourney last Saturday (read the previous post).  It was a grueling day and I am convinced the only thing that made it bearable was the high rise seat.

First thing I noticed - its not a bit more "tippy" than the regular seat.  If you put this in my boat without my knowledge - I wouldn't have noticed until I reached down to grab something.  It's that stable.

It's a very comfortable position to paddle from and allows me to really shift my legs around and particularly I can cross my legs and paddle - not an effective paddling position but when my sciatic flares up this helps me tremendously.

The only con is that the new seat is bulky and it takes up more of the rear area so I had to move my cooler bags just a little further back in the boat.
What you see here is that I would normally have the seat up about 6 more inches and my cooler would sit there now I move it back into the tank well.  It works out fine because I simply use the strap (see the video) to move forward when paddling this recenters my gravity for a better paddling experience.  (All the gear in the back plus me you get kind of a drag racer position for the boat.

Once I'm to my spot I like to stand and fish most of the day - this makes rising and sitting much easier and with the movable seat I just slide back and stand up.

Notice another plus a few handy places to set things like pliers, fish grabbers, and even reading glasses (if you are old like me).


Here's a side by side to show you the differences in size of the two seats.

This last one is a shot of the tackle tray and the spacious area of new storage under the seat.  I ended up just piling stuff up down there (drift sock, towel, food cooler, etc).

It's a great new edition and well worth the price.  I think they should make it standard although I may keep the old seat for offshore conditions for just an added sense of stability real or imaginary.


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