Should I sand the bottom of my play boat?

[cstork]

I just bought my first play boat--a used Prijon Delerium.

The bottom is fairly rough. No major scratches, but a lot of minor ones.

Does anyone have any ideas how much it would help to sand the bottom to make it more smooth? I'm not talking about taking off a significant amount of plastic, just smoothing out a lot of the burrs.

I saw that the S6X has this super smooth plastic plate that looks replacable. I assume this is because the super smoothness helps you surf.

Thanks.

[thecraw]

Don't worry about it in the slightest... You won't notice it for a second.

Just get in that thing and go like there's no tomorrow!!!

[Electric-Mayhem]

The design idea for it is that you can put a different shaped piece of plastic on there so that the hull characteristics could change. The downside was that you had to buy an extra package for it and it was hard to get and I don't ever think i saw one. I wouldn't say you need to do anything about the scratches on the boat. If anything I would say going at it with a heat gun would do more then sanding it, but either way its not gonna effect anything hugely. One thing that it may effect is the sharpness of a harder rail, so the carving might get worse, but the Delirium doesn't have really sharp chines to begin with. So, in other words, don't worry about it. Any sand paper that would do anything to large scatches in Prijon plastic would probably just make it worse anyways. Have fun with the boat, should be fun for ya.

Josh

[Caspian]

I wouldn't sand it. The Delirium (and the Delirious) is extraordinarily loose on a wave and you won't ever know there's scratches. If there are lots of plastic hangnails, those can be cleaned up with a knife or cuticle trimmer, which is really more of a thing to do before you sell a boat. In the meantime, save the plastic for splatwheels and seal launches.

[Jiberish]

no dont

My two cents
Ben

[Don]

Don't do it. The boat is in fine working order. I get this question rather often, mostly from skiers. The bottom of your kayak does not have to be smooth to work. The scratches and scraps won't effect the boat at all.

The S6x was never really designed for paddling in Colorado. The S6x was built for deep water features and waves. The plastic plate is on the bottom to protect the hardware on the bottom of the kayak. Then you could take off the plate and replace it with a platic wedge. The idea was that the wedge shape would help slow down the boat on fast waves and give the rider more time to set up for tricks. The only people that bought into the S6x were buying into the hype of the newest thing. You don't need the extra bling to throw a kayak around.

[Brook]

Bored here and thought I'd also chime in. I concure with the rest,(about not sanding) however you can take a sharp blade and cut off any stragling peices of plastic that stick out (usually just on the tips/tails) Don't perform major surgery however!

-BA