Hey all-

I wasn't sure which forum to put this in, so feel free to move it around if needed.

So here's the thing... For years, I've been annoyed with how biased the "reviews" are in the boating world. Pretty much every review of a product is done by a sponsored athlete. I always think.... well of course they like it, they got it for free.

For those of us who pay for boats, drysuits, paddles, etc, these are big decisions. I've been frustrated by the impossibility of finding real information about the boats I want to buy unless I go try them myself.

So, a few other boaters and I have teamed up with a well known gear review site, Blister Gear Review to bring you a new source for in depth paddling reviews that are all written by unsponsored paddlers.

We released our first review today, a review of the time tested Dagger Nomad 8.5. Does it still measure up when compared to new designs like the Stomper, Shiva, and Recon?

Give it a read and let me know what we can do to give you guys the best boat and gear reviews on the planet so that we can all make the right decision when we decide to drop big bucks on a shiny new piece of plastic.

Coming soon are in depth reviews of the Stomper 90, Rock Star M, and more.

David

Great review,  Ive never paddled a Nomad but all your comparisons and explanations of performance (or lack of) in certain types of water in relation to the hull design make perfect sense and is pretty much what I would have expected of the nomad.

Ah, thanks irene! I tried to embed the link in the text, but clearly I messed up something. So thank you :).

Yeah, so far we've been lucky to review two pretty awesome boats. Next up will be a review of the Rock Star, which is a bit of a more of a complicated story. We aim to portray the boats as accurately as possible so, if it is a good boat (in our opinion), we will say it. If it isn't we will say that too.

mokelumnekid- I'll take those thoughts into account for sure. We will be in a better position to do more and more comparisons like that as we review more boats. Can you think of anything that I should have included in the Nomad review that wasn't in there?

Here are direct links to both reviews that we have online so far. Keep the critiques coming :)

Stomper 90

Nomad 8.5

Edited by davidspiegel - 16 Apr 2013 at 8:22pm

Nice work David.

I like how you tell about who is reviewing the boat.

I agree with others that some sort of "conversation" or dialogue about the boat would be neat. People's preferences vary so much.

Most of all, though, I would love it if someone paddled 4-5 of the creekboats a lot, and then really discussed their differences, maybe created some sort of scale for different features.

EJ is biased, but he has a good review of the new Karma

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-uUUSEftLs

I would be curious for someone to compare a view of performance relative to what EJ says the boat is supposed to do. Looks pretty similar to other new boat designs, but I like idea of the assymetric stern rocker intended to maintain landing speed. Probably reduces boofability, though.

Edited by chipmaney - 18 Apr 2013 at 4:59pm