Folding Kayaks

I had always thought that folding boats were a bad idea given the punishment the ocean can

dish out.  You may or may not have seen ads for these in boating magazines, they were 

always in the back with the kit boats and other craft of dubious provenance and safety.

As I have come to learn however, the genuinely useful things in boating magazines are not the

shiny, gel coated and carpeted, mass production boats, but the weird stuff in the back.  Okay,

the fact that they had dubious sounding names like "Folbot" certainly didn't help.  In any case,

my first impression was flat out wrong, in fact a Klepper folding kayak was singlehanded across

the Atlantic in 1953.  I certainly had no idea that the folding kayak is used by many special forces

units for stealthy infiltration of enemy positions (presumably because they fold up into a large

duffle bag and are easy to get in and out of submarine hatches.  As it turns out, Folbot kayaks

were used somewhat famously by the SAS during WWII.  Go Figure.

Major Manufacturers include Nautiraid(pictured), Folboat and Klepper