Sea Eagle 330 inflatable

A year ago I bought a couple of used Sea Eagle 330 inflatable boats.  The Sea Eagle company calls this a "kayak," but I think "canoe" would be a better term.

The Sea Eagle 330 at Elkhorn Slough.

These boats had been used on rivers, and each one needed repairs.  I had the chance to go to Elkhorn Slough in the spring, and brought the one that I thought was finally seaworthy (I wasn't able to bring a hardshell kayak, and the Folbot still needed a couple of small repairs).

The Sea Eagle doesn't perform well compared to a hardshell kayak, and maybe not quite as well as the Stearns inflatable kayak I used to have.  It doesn't track well, and it takes a lot of effort to paddle against the wind.  A lot of water drips into the boat because there's no spray skirt, or any convenient ways to jury-rig a spray skirt, which isn't such a big deal, but is annoying.

On the upside, it's very portable, it's fairly easy to inflate and get to the water, it has room for more stuff than the Stearns had.  It's significantly lighter than a hardshell kayak, so carrying it to the beach is less of a pain.  It's easy to make time downwind, although you pay for it when you paddle to windward.  The original seats were missing when I bought it, so I was using a kid's paddleboard for a seat without a backrest.
 
Elkhorn Slough isn't especially pretty (although I didn't see very much of it), but the many sea otters, sea lions, and seals make it interesting.  There are also lots of people, first-timers and experts and everyone else,  in kayaks.  It was windy enough that I couldn't paddle far inland, but I didn't have a problem in the harbor on the north side of the slough.

Tourists annoying a dock full of sea lions.

So:

The Sea Eagle 330 is not a terrific boat for flat water paddling, but it's much better than nothing.  For what I paid for it (<$30) it's an exceptional boat.  If you were considering buying a brand new one, you might want to consider something else if you really want a kayak rather than a canoe.  A Crazy Creek type of camping chair over a type IV PFD (boat cushion) might be a good replacement for each inflatable chair it's supposed to have, and some kind of simple plastic skeg glued onto the the bottom would probably improve performance.  The 330 might be okay for short camping trips inland, unless you have to keep up with other people in hardshell boats.

It might also perform better with a rigid frame.  I was thinking of making one from old windsurfing booms, but I don't think that will ever get done, unless I end up using this boat a lot.

Elkhorn Slough is worth visiting for the all the sea otters and other marine mammals.  The scenery is (at best) only marginally better than that on the Petaluma or Napa rivers, and probably not as good as Big Break or the Suisun marshes.

If the sea otters weren't there then I wouldn't recommend making a two-hour drive to get there to someone who hadn't seen the local sloughs first.  You can see river otters in the delta and the marshes, and seals and sea lions locally in SF Bay, San Pablo Bay, Suisun Bay, the Carquinez Strait, the Oakland estuary, probably in Richardson Bay, and so on, although in much smaller numbers than at Elkhorn Slough.