You must think I came up the river in a banana boat......

Well by the look of the new addition to the family I did. Take a look at my new (to me anyway) Perception Mirage...............the Banana Boat!!

She was advertised on eBay at a start price of £100 ($157 US) which for a 20 year old boat (even with the spray deck and paddle) I thought was pushing it a bit. This was the ad:

You will have noticed the bit about the dent (I'm fairly certain all the potential bidders did too). This is the offending item:

Nasty huh?

Now if I hadn't already researched dents in poly kayaks and listened to the wise and comforting words of folks much more experienced than me, it's likely I would have pressed the 'unwatch' tab and moved on. However, I did plenty of reading regarding dents or 'oil-canning' as it's rather niftily labelled. There's even some comforting words on the Perception website which suggests the scratches on the hull would probably cause more drag than a dent. The up-shot is that apparently dents can be fairly quickly and easily removed from roto-mold poly kayaks with equipment as unsophisticated as a hair dryer and a breeze block  Yes, you've guessed it - I'm going to try it and it will be a future post on this blog.

Back to the tale.....when I first spotted the Mirage, there were 6 days left to run on the auction and, apart from the high starting bid, I had a sneaky suspicion that the dent would put a lot of people off. As it turns out it put everybody off. With an hour to go on the auction I emailed the seller and offered £75 ($118 US) with a promise that I could pick up the following day - the boat was in Kettering, 35 minutes away. The auction finished, the boat went unsold and I got an email 5 minutes later asking me to come and collect - back of the net :-)

So, I went and collected her yesterday evening. And, I have to say that, despite the dent, she is in really good condition with only the usual scuffs on the hull. The seat is perfect and comes with a basic back rest, the footrests are aluminium and I have already loosened and adjusted them to fit, even the decals are in good order - she's obviously been dry stored and washed regularly. The ethafoam flotation is in good condition and runs the length of the boat. She's even fitted with knee braces (I think they may have been standard on the Mirage) which are in perfect order. The paddle (an old New Wave one piece alu) is in great order - at least it is now that I've rubbed it down with white spirit to get all the gaffer tape residue off and the YAK spray deck is a bonus.

So, she's pretty much ready for her maiden (with me) voyage. I'm going to try her out on the Grand Union tomorrow afternoon if I can get out of work early enough :-) I just hope the rain holds off.

My only reservation is how snug the cockpit is - I can get in it okay, but that's when it's sat on my lawn!! Getting into her from the canalside, which is the same as getting in from a dock (with a good 12 inch drop) will be a challenge I'm sure. I'll keep you posted on that one, but let me tell you right now, given my experience of climbing into the Drama Queen the first time and nearly taking a dip, I'll be going dressed for swimming tomorrow!!

When I first spotted her on eBay, I tried to do as much research on the Mirage model as I could and it seems that, from all the negative comments on the forums, it was about as popular as the Dancer - i.e. about as welcome as a fart in a spacesuit!! But then I read an article called 'The Way-Back Machine' written by a kayaker called Derrick on Kayak Quixotica. It was inspiring. Here was a guy who'd heard all the negativity regarding the Dancer and Mirage and so, when the chance to buy an old black Mirage came up, he bought it and subsequently took it white water running on his local river. He then wrote this article which - don't get me wrong, he doesn't conclude by telling everyone to scour eBay for the next available boat - but he does give an honest, almost nostalgic view of his experiences and if I'm going to take any notice of someone being critical of a boat, I'll make sure they've actually tried it for themselves and not just jumped on the band-wagon in order to try and sound cool and all knowing - I loved the article. And I bought my own Mirage. Thank you Derrick.

So that's it for now - I'll be back tomorrow and hopefully tell you about my first trip in the Banana Boat (I've got to come up with a better name than that - any suggestions via blog comments would be very welcome :-) !).

Before I go, here's a topical joke courtesy of Becky:

Q: What's long, yellow and never rings?

A: An unlisted banana!!! :-)

Thanks for looking.