Perception Hi Life 11 | Sit on Top Kayak for Adults | Hybrid SUP Stand up Paddle Board Kayak | 11'

I have been using the Kayak 3-4 times a week for about 2 months, paddling the dog around on the Tennessee River.Pointers I've taken away. There was not female end for the screw to hold the fin in place. Having read people broke fins and that longboard fins worked (and not the easiest support from the vendor, yet I confessed i haven't followed up) ... I used a longboard screw and flat washer (you can order them). Also I highly recommend a 10" longboard fin that you can custom fit with a simple shortening of the mounting base and a new drilled hole. Why? the longboard fin is the same length but has more "surface" and I think it tracks better. I use both. I guess I should finish the "claim" with confluence, but it's riduculous to file a claim when all you need is a small part and to be told how to secure the female end to the bottom of the boat.Performance: I don't think you can tip this thing over. Also, if you have a big dog, dog on front! Paddles much more easily and efficiently, tracks like a champ with the extra weight up front (my opinion).I paddle 8 milers with a long play break at redneck beach in the middle of the paddle (4 miles). I have to confess, I'm fit and I get all I can handle doing that, wake up the next morning feeling muscle sore like i did when I used to play rec hockey. Yet by mid morning I'm ready to do it again. Kayaking is great for upper body fitness and with my boat gone (age), the dog is having a GREAT summer, swimming his butt off. The dog has learned to "mostly" stay centered (vs cattywompas) which is nice. this took a little time and long paddles, but we are there. I pack a frisbee up front under the bungees with an old waist belt (skiing). The "cooler under the seat is not so good. I keep an extra fin and lights in a gallon baggie in there. Bought a cooler backpack from walmart, cut a hole in it and fill it with drinks and a camelbak bladder. Here in Alabama, I usually drain the bladder completely and sometimes have a seltzer mid paddle. So it's a great boat for me to get the dog onto the water and get my upper body back in shape.I love it. I really do.Also! it is so stable, I can retrieve the dog in deep water if I get on my knees and concentrate on balance. you can see the harness on the dog, that's how I used to snatch him up into the boat.That's it. my experience. I highly recommend this boat for the purposes I use it for.Paddle: Perception Hi-Life Convertible SUP/Kayak Paddle - 3 Piece works great (for me). I go between the longest two settings. for this boat the longest setting is best, and I'm short. I like to change things up from time to time and go one setting shorter.Being my first boat I like it (don't know much better), and it is COMPLETELY filling my need for workouts in the summer on the Tennessee river and getting the dog completely worn out (fetching frisbees at breaks and swimming/running the shoreline as I paddle sometimes.Thanks for letting me share.

This kayak is awesome. It has it's own chair, a cooler area under the chair, a large area to stand on with non slip padding, and of coarse love the colors! Very eye catching! I go out on the lake once a week for about 4 hours. Very relaxing.

Perception appears to have set out to make a recreational multipurpose kayak that borrows several great features of their extensive line of fishing kayaks and blends those with a SUP, and I believe they succeeded. Even though the model is a few years old at this point, it does effectively combine a SUP with a hardside kayak and keeps several of the most desirable traits of each.Time spent setting it up is essentially nonexistent. It's ready to hit the water the moment it's in your possession. One of the bungee tabs on mine got bumped in shipping and was reversed. The bung plug was shipped fully unscrewed (versus only loose to manage for pressure differences). Make sure to close it before first use. The rest is a matter of snipping some zipties and getting it to your put-in.The Hi Life works great in all three (according to me) recreational positions -- sitting, standing, kneeling -- and switching from one to another takes minimal skill in calm water. Its rear deck also permits laid-back pauses in the forward motion by simply sitting in it. Standing use of it as a SUP feels stable and is not appreciably faster or slower than other SUPs I've used (hardside, inflatable). Kneeling, if you want to, provides tremendous paddling leverage and I can attain my fastest speeds when paddling in this position. Sitting however is the position that best combines speed and comfort.The seat is quite comfortable, and I've used it for up to three hours in an outing with only infrequent standing, but the big selling point here is, you can stand whenever you feel you need to (and when your abilities exceed local conditions). I like to stand and use it as a SUP when I'm exploring quiet coves and negotiating over and near large shoreline boulders. Turns using a rear stance would be very difficult due to the seat to straddle, so if you really want a true SUP experience, you'll need to look into a dedicated SUP, rather than a hybrid.Side-to-side stability is great. I can easily go over propagated and interfering wakeboarding waves and handle moderate chop from a 15 mph breeze. I haven't tried my luck in SUP mode doing this, but seated it's pretty fun to go over wakes. On- and off-boarding is especially simple, since there's no sidewall to step over and potentially trip on. I use a parallel-to-shore approach and it works perfectly every time.The supplied skeg bolts in and keeps the craft tracking well. Digging hard, I have pretty minimal side-to-side zigzag motion.The Hi Life doesn't have a ton of tie-downs or frills, but does offer the two rail mounts so you can attach any compatible aftermarket brackets, mounts, eyes or snap-in features. The rear rail doubles as an aid for a swimmer to pull him/herself up onto the rear deck. The front rail mount is situated between two enlarged scupper hole openings that one can use as water bottle holders. Note that neither of these is large enough to handle a standard 32-oz nalgene bottle. For that, the under-seat storage compartment is needed and quite adequate. In my experience, the storage compartment can hold two 32-oz water bottles, a small dry bag with snacks and wallet and keys, and a second small dry bag with my phone. The craft's features are all described or at least somewhat hinted at in Perception's product videos.Two of us tested the Hi Life to near its weight limit, and I cannot say it did well. It will hold two people in that weight range, but it's decidedly not a safe feeling with paddling, and an adult on the front deck should expect to get quite wet and potentially end up in the water. I suspect that an adult + dog or adult + small child is very manageable and could be pretty fun. I haven't yet tried a static load at all on either deck; whatever's in either position will definitely get wet, so take appropriate steps to protect that cargo.What's missing? A good way to temporarily stow a fully assembled paddle. The front bungee does its part, but the other end of the paddle has no mount point. I've worked around this by shoving a velcro cinch loop and D-ring through one of the seat mounting rings, and that does surprisingly well at holding the paddle securely so you don't have to think about that escaping when for instance you're retrieving a snack out of the storage compartment, or simply want to pause and take in the scenery. It's a fun watercraft that's easy to pilot and enjoy. It tracks well and is satisfyingly stable both as a SUP and as a sit-on-top kayak. It's fairly fast and I feel far more secure in windy chop on it, than in an inflatable kayak we also own and use.Despite all these great features for the water craft itself, getting one delivered was an ordeal. If you just want to know about my experience using the Hi Life itself, ignore the rest of the review. If you want to consider the entire project of getting yourself a Hi Life, read on and also pay attention to other reviewers' experiences with shipping delays and damage.From time of ordering to when it was finally in my garage was 39 calendar days. Really. July 16-Aug 24. When it did arrive, it was loosely wrapped only by the tattered remnants of what would have been a 10-mil plastic wrapper and a few scraps of brown paper. That was it. The hull was mainly exposed, dirty, heavily scratched from bow to stern, and a deep gash marked the sidewall. It's incredible to me that it wasn't fully compromised. I was also amazed that the accessory bag containing the skeg and a few instruction sheets was still ziptied to the seat strap. Perception should really take steps to protect their nice products with significantly improved packaging -- I don't think it needed to be crated, but a double-wall cardboard wrap with expanding foam would be worth considering, so a new retail product doesn't arrive looking like an abused demo model.My phone number was never communicated to the initial logistics company, so obtaining shipping status was severely hampered and required multiple calls to them, and they still couldn't get my phone number associated with the shipment, so it sat in warehouse after warehouse for several days each stop, rather than being moved to the next destination terminal. It was only after several calls to the last-mile delivery company that some approximation of its location was communicated to me. The lack of my phone number propagated through all three logistics companies despite my repeated telling them how to reach me. Down to the day it actually arrived, one of the last-mile delivery customer service reps who I had to call and then had to contact again with help from an Amazon customer service rep, informed me it was in the wrong city over 100 miles away. (Fortunately that was wrong, but it served to emphasize what a nutty mess this all was.)The entire delivery effort was a fiasco and I seriously wondered on many occasions if I would need to cancel the order because it was un-locatable and appeared to be lost in transit. Weeks went by with no status tracking updates whatsoever, and I was never contacted except on the morning before it was to be delivered. I had to search out and contact several of the last-mile logistics company locations, searching for the shipment myself, essentially having to become my own logistics manager. It was an immense relief that it was finally delivered, and a big disappointment in its condition on arrival, enough that I contacted Amazon customer service again about the concern.Is this pertinent to the product itself? No, except for the woefully inadequate packaging and that the kayak somehow survived transit. Is it pertinent to placing an order for it? I feel it is, but it's up to you to decide how much of the season you lose while waiting for it.

If you’re looking for versatility in a hybrid, this is it!I bought one last year and then another this year. I used an inflatable for a year before my first hybrid and the inflation process got old. This hybrid is very sturdy (even more than a kayak)and perfect for those that question their balance ability. It can accommodate extra riders like dogs and kids. I won’t lie about one thing, this does not glide through the water as easily as an inflatable, but I have no trouble keeping up with the pack. It can be used in early spring and fall without fear of tipping. The Perception accepts Yak accessories on its center and back rail if you want to bring fishing gear, a mounted camera, etc.The only deterrents with this hybrid is weight(55lbs) and transport. I bought a kayak cart and am able to put both hybrids and haul at the same time. They make all kinds of roof racks for these that can be easily and temporarily attached to the roof of your car for transport.I highly recommend this Hybrid for beginners and when you want to carry extra riders, human or canine.⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Hi Life is a great hybrid boat that I wish I had bought from a physical location or ordered right from perception. Arrived with gouges all over the pads where your feet go when you stand up. Had card board on the bottom and nothing by plastic to cover the soft food pads. No packing material at all. And the truck it came on had it wedged between two pieces of furniture, was not tied to anything. Pathetic shipping job for an awesome product.