Thanks for the repair

Many thanks to Alpaca folks for the warranty repair on my seat for my Denali. Just finnished a river trip on the tippy in Indiana. Many log jams. My wife has a Yak. We slept out on an island in the river in Clark jungle hammocks. I am 64, my wife is 57. I have bad knees, but the Alpacas enable us to travel in style with all our gear on these tiny rafts. Once we learned to jump in and out of the rafts and not open the mouth valve with our butts, we were able to keep the rafts firm enough to fly arounf the logs and debree.
I am going to make a cover for the valves that can be pealed back to blow them up. We used the OR packs with the roll top seal. I took a spill, trying to get up a slippery bank. The pack kept every thing dry. We need to add more tiedowns. Thanks to Andrew for his help on repairs and mods. :wink:

The mouth-valve opening is a real annoyance, and occasionally dangerous. I got the impression that Alpacka was finally moving or flipping the valve to resolve this issue on the newest rafts, but I haven’t seen a new raft to check. True?

Good idea to put a protective cover though…

The mouth valve on my Alpaca is on the stern of the raft. But I do have a spray deck on it Perhaps that makes a difference?

We’re now putting the mouth valves on the stern, near the main valve, on all the rafts. Wherever we put them seems to be a trade-off, but so far the stern is working out well. It seems to have eliminated the “Ahhh, I just opened the valve with my leg!” moment.

I’ve been happy with the valve on the stern of the scout… I like that you can stand the boat on end to use the mouth-valve.