When the planning starts, one of the first and most significant choices to make is which boat? For me it came down to a choice between the Rockpool G.T. and the Taran - also by Rockpool. After being involved with the design, shaping, testing and paddling of the Taran I must admit I must have a soft spot for it. The G.T. is a good boat but to me the Taran is special. The Taran was never designed as a pure exped boat though so it wasn't a clear cut decision. I wondered if the weather may affect my paddling days more in the Taran, but as Aled pointed out, if I'm not happy to leave the beach in the Taran I'm not going to be happy to launch in any other boat either. It's nearly 3 years since I started paddling the boat in it's earliest form and so I think I know it better than anyone, I'm happy I have made the right decision.
Next we had to decide on the construction. For an exped the consensus is usually to go with polyester/glass for 'ease of repair' and also heavier to cope with the wear and tear. But then we'd not been scared to bend the rules with the Taran; so we went a bit lighter along with epoxy/diolen for the construction. This is a bit of a gamble admittedly, but it has advantages too - it will be interesting to see if we got this one right.
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