11/4/2009 | by: Jennifer Gibbins - Prince William Soundkeepers

WOW -we are impressed with the AIRE inflatable kayak!!!!

We used one of your inflatable kayaks this summer in conjunction with a marine debris clean up project. The debris we were picking up had been collected, bagged and staged for pick up on a barrier island in the Gulf of Alaska, adjacent to the mouth of the Copper River. We came in via a commercial fishing vessel, but the surf was too rough to bring the boat into shore.
Fortunately we had an AIRE inflatable on board so two members of our team paddled into shore through the surf with NO problem. Once the debris was loaded they attempted to paddle through the surf back to the fishing boat. The stability of the Aire inflatable was incredible - fully loaded with hundreds of pounds of bagged debris and two determined paddlers - the AIRE {Sea Tiger} kayak was repeatedly tossed straight up - almost directly perpendicular to the crashing surf - at one point literally tossing one paddler out - but it held steady fully loaded.
The surf and tide proved too powerful for our paddlers and we resorted to a tow line to get the loaded kayak with paddlers through the surf whereupon the paddlers could take over and paddle back to the boat.
After several more trips our crew was completely impressed with the AIRE {Sea Tiger} kayak and they added a third paddler who could not resist helping to load the kayak and ride the surf!

11/3/2009 | by: Jim Boyle

My wife and I have paddled our 10 year old Sea Tiger over 1500 miles on most of the class II rivers of France, England's entire Thames R. from source to London and all over Ireland...entirely on public transportation!
The Sea Tiger goes in one Eagle Creek rolling duffle bag and the 4 piece break down Aquabound paddles, pfds, and usual light weight camping gear go in the second rolling duffle. Two mid weight soft backpacks complete our "luggage" and with this set up we are 100% (slowly) mobile through airports, train & bus stations and use an occasional taxi to reach our put in. Two days to two weeks later we arrive at our take out, the Sea Tiger is dried (inside and out for weight) and returns to it's duffle bag for train and it's air flight home. The Sea Tiger carries the two of us and carefully prioritized "backpack" style camping gear down class I-II rivers.
I often run it alone sans rudder through short sections of Class III water that we don't want to portage. In 1500 miles of use up and down rural and urban river banks we are yet to patch the boat! We always fly two small flags on the bow, the US flag and the flag of the country we are visiting... you cannot overstate the interest this rig generates as we pull into foreign towns and campsites. Nobody can believe that this style of travel is possible...without the Sea Tiger it would be impossible.
I am not saying that with this gear...it is easy to transit train stations etc...but it my wife and I are both over 60 and we DO it. Because no matter how physically challenging the transportation might at time become ...once you get the Sea Tiger on the river...the work is over and the poetry begins. I view the Sea Tiger as transformational. It has taken us places to ubelieveable experiences that I did not even imagine exsisted. GREAT BOAT!

5/28/2009 | by: Don Rasky

I've owned the Sea Tiger all of 7 days now and have had it on the water twice since opening the box. It took rougly 10 minutes from box to boat sans rudder. The rudder took another 3 mins to set up and a couple of minutes properly position the foot pegs. This is one beautiful boat and one quality piece of engineering and construction. I understand that this boat has gone out of the AIRE line once already but was recently brought back. I hope that it never leaves again or only for what few improvements could possibly be made to its design. I'm 5' 10" and 200+ lbs but the boat carries me, my gear, and responds like a dream. It even does pretty well w/o the rudder down if I am fresh and paying attention to my paddle stroke. Each day I had the boat out I took an 8 - 10 mile paddle and spent at least 4 hours on the water. The boat cruised between 3.2 and 3.5 mph on average in flat water conditions, 4 mph was possi ble with some effort but not for any distance as a solo paddler. Properly configured and adjusted, I could paddle this boat all day or simply tie off and nap or drift without concern of being flipped or unsettled by unhappy waters or inconvenient boat wakes. In fact, the only reason I got off of the boat at all was to practice getting back into the boat. It's a tough boat to tip over. I had to put all 200+ lbs of my body weight concentrated on the palms of my hands over one tube just to get the boat to tip over. I nearly had to stand on the tube! The flipping strap attached to the Cheetah chair (another excellent feature, chair+strap), made righting the boat a snap. Re-entry was also pretty easy coming in over the stern/bow. As for other things I like about this boat..., it's all but bomb proof and with all the D-rings and pairs of cargo loops on the boat, keeping gear secured in any water condition is dead easy. I own 5 other high quality inflatable boats from another manufa cturer but the Sea Tiger is in a class of its own by far. Excellent job on the customer support and on the video user's manual DVD. Thank you AIRE for making such a beautiful boat.