Whoa dude…just got off of a 4 day bike/packraft trip on the deschutes, from bend to maupin. My carbon fiber aqua bound paddle stapped in half 14 miles in!! Just ferrying away from a hole and it broke right in the center, the piece that enters the hollow shaft. Bummer man. I wraped a bunch of sticks around them and it worked awsome for the rest of the trip, as long as I rewrapped them in the morning. Anybody have a problem with their paddles? I never abused it, i am awfuly burly though…
Bummer man. I had my aqua bound shaft get swiped once at a beach, turns out you can’t just order a new shaft, gotta get the whole enchilada.
Say, how’s packrafting the Deschutes? You live in Oregon? I typically reside in Ashland myself.
It was waaay fun…super mellow most of the way, but just enough whitewater to keep it fun. The bike ride definatly gave me a sore ass though. I have a dry suit which was essential, beautiful canyon, and back in time for class. Ashland is close man, let me know if you plan any trips. Its nice to have fellow packrafters around. This spring should be interesting…
There’s tons of great spring floating for sure. Unfortunately I’ll miss it this year as I’ll be in NZ for school…which is hardly unfortunate I suppose. One float I really like is the Chewaucan river down by Paisley (not too far from Bend). There’s a short window for running it in the spring, but it’s awesome for packrafting, and not to mention hardly anyone even knows about it. I’ve also had my eye on the Donner und Blitzen for awhile, which drains the Steens. Was going to run it last year but it was flood stage when I came through. Same story; only runnable in the spring. Have fun bro! I’ll try to look you up when I get back this summer.
Contact Aqua Bound or the people at Alpacka Raft. If it was a failure of the product not due to your abuse of it, I would expect the company to repair and or replace it at their cost.
Thanks…I just emailed and called them…we’ll see how this works out. The paddle should NOT have broken, I babied that thing. I was amazed how well a tight p-cord and sticks repair worked out!
Nice! Brandnew paddle! No problem, i showed them a video of the broken paddle and some pics and now I have a new paddle!
I broke an Aqua Bound a few months ago: snapped the shaft and lost a blade. Completely my fault: I flipped the Witchcraft in a hole and snapped the paddle on a rock on the way over. The customer service dept was amazing, and sold me a replacement blade & shaft for cheap. Great customer service!
I also had a good experience with Aqua Bound replacing broken blades for free. Not that that’s much consolation when you’re still a week from civilization, but nobody builds a totally flawless product.
The glue that holds the two paddle halfs together on my Splat failed last week after running Echo Bend. I called The mfg and they mailed me a replacement yesterday. Excellent customer service, just hope it arrives before the weekend.