Pelican Apex II

I'm looking at buying a sit-on-top kayak that could be used for recreational uses (flat water rivers plus occasional runs down the Guadalupe around Austin / New Braunfels in Texas) and for offshore diving (possibly here in Texas, possibly on trips to Florida)... A couple of local stores have the Pelican Apex II model for sale... It is 12'9' long and the front seat area appears to be large enough for me to put my double tanks in it... Most of the ones that advertise themselves as being appropriate for diving seem to have hatches that might allow a single tank, but would definitely not allow a set of doubles... This would be my first Kayak and for $380 (including back rests and paddles), it seems like an acceptable first step into kayaking... I've searched the web (includings past postings of the newsgroups) and I can't find much in the way of reviews or opinions on this particular model... Pelican does make very good hard sided plastic travel / shipping cases, so I would expect that they know how to do plastic right... It appears to be fairly solid feeling and I would put it up there with Ocean Kayak with regard to my initial impression of it's solid appearance... I've also noticed that Coleman relabels and resells this exact same model under their name... I understand that Coleman canoes do not necessarily have the best reputation though...

Has anyone around here tried this model out? Opinons?

'Matt' wrote ...

Ooops... My mistake... The Pelican web page has a link to a 'Pelican International', but it's not the same as the kayak builder... The plastics did feel similar though...