Ha. Ya see, M, that's what's wrong with the world today. People can't be arsed with conflict and the clash of ideas and designs and as such we miss valuable opportunities for 'moderating' crap ideas and learning what's good for which scenarios.
People don't seem to value that opportunity as highly as I'd like these days and we end up with a vanilla society and fundamentalists with ideas and beliefs that were never adequately moderated by society early enough in their gestation. And we are breeding softcocks who insist upon building rainbow coloured walls of skittles guarded by unicorns on fluffy white clouds and whom can't cope with conflict or scrutiny or rejection or being challenged in any way.
We as a society are far worse off for it, me thinks. Besides, we all know, as I have proven it over many years, the NZ-made Phoenix is by far the choice of every serious kingi-hunting yakker this side of the devoid-of-colour stump. But for the moonshot I'm happy to admit it's gonna wear me out before I find anything resembling a marlin.
Regarding the visit, good idea, thanks. But it better include a whole day on the water with different yaks to get a feel for the best for me, if any or it's just wasting my time and Ryan's. Besides, as someone who tends to capsize his yak many times each Summer, I'm going to take at least a few hours just getting used to paddling a toothpick so will need a bit longer than a normal demo-day paddle about to get a good feel for the yaks as a fishing platform. Ideally I need to be towed around by a kingi to work a few things out.
*edit* I've got a benchmark paddle out to Langs and back that will be a superb test of the efficiency and give me a baseline to project how much further I can range on a Stealth while still being safe (I get very unco when tired), so perhaps a demo day without the chance to keep one for a few days isn't gonna fly all that great now that I think about it some more.
For all I know, I might get back from the Langs beach run on a demo Stealth and have to admit it's my fitness that is the weak link and a Stealth isn't going to compensate enough for that so I may as well stay with Kermit (my green Phoenix weapon) for all the good a Stealth will do for my feeble self, and plan instead on hitching a boat ride home, along with the marlin I land ;-)