Weight and sea kayak

Hello, I am new to kayaking. Me and my girlfriend like to start kayaking on a seakayak. I like to know if there is a way to calculate the weight of the person in a kayak from the total amount of ballast a kayak can hold. Like a perception sealion can hold 180 kg ballast and I weigh around 75 kg. Is this boat too big for me?

I would suggest that the answer is: 'It depends.' Do you intend to go on trips that would require you to haul a lot of baggage along? Or are you intending on just doing day trips with only a lunch and some dry clothes along?

Second, how does the boat feel to you when you are paddling in it? Loaded? Unloaded?

The only real answer is to find a store that will let you try out the kayaks you are considering. Hopefully, they will have competent salespeople who will give you honest advice as well as the chance to try the boats.

There are so many factors that come into play when deciding on a kayak that your best bet is to paddle a bunch

First of all thanks for your fast answer. Well the problem is that I am looking for a used one, since I am new to kayaking and want to try it out I don't want to spend a lot of money on a new one. So the choice of kayaks is limited.

The ones I am able to buy now are a 1989 polyester prijon seayak and a perception sealion. But the sealion ballast seems big (180 kg) to me. So I am wondering whether that is too much. The seayak were at a shop and I thought the price was somewhat high (500 euros), but they were OK when I tried them out. The perception is not at a shop, so I think trying out gets somewhat harder.

Henk

check out www.paddling.net maybe there are some reviews. Also Seakayaker Magazine does reviews

Both the Seayak and the Sea Lion are great boats. The 1989 date on the Prijon would have me thinking and as far as I know the Sealion replaced the Chinook and was replaced by the Silhouette and shadow , so the Sea Lion is a couple of years old as well. Assuming you are going to use it mostly for day tripping and up to a couple of nights out you should be fine with either. If these boats have been out in the sun a lot it may be an idea to check for UV damage, brittleness. Check for oil canning , specially in the Sea Lion. Prijon has great plastic. I have one of their white water boats and it is increadible. Puts a new spin on used: Me my kids and two or three youth clubs beat the hell out of it. It ws usd when I got it in 1996. In a sellers market I would expect to pay not much less than $1,000 Canadian or $700.00 US for these boats. That would assume they are in good shape. That would be around 500 Quid UK. I have a Capella poly for day trips with friends and an NDK Explorer for longer trips where I have to carry stuff or when I have to keep up with faster friends. Once you get into this sport that is how it will likely go. If I were to have only one boat it would be the P & H because I use it all the time but when the wieght goes in that boat it slows down a lot. How often can you go for extended camping trips though?? Enjoy the sport. It is terriffic.