About Stroke & Stern
A site about inflatable kayaks, paddle boards and pumps for people who have to get them somewhere first.
Why this site exists
It started with a spec sheet that would not answer a simple question. An inflatable paddle board is sold on the promise that it packs away. So how big is the package?
Six of the eight boards we ended up compiling do not say. Neither do three of the eight kayaks. For a category whose entire selling point is portability, the number that describes the portability is the one most likely to be missing from the page.
The same thing turned out to be true of nearly everything a travel buyer needs. Across eleven ranking buying guides, all eleven publish product weight, six publish packed dimensions, three mention airline baggage, two give an inflation time, one publishes a recommended pressure, and none publishes a pump stroke count.
Every one of those gaps is closable with published manufacturer specifications and division. No test lab required. That is what this site does.
Who writes it
Scooter M. is an enthusiast who is genuinely into this stuff. I read the manuals, compile the published specs, and do the math. No lab coat, no test pond -- just the numbers the manufacturers publish and the arithmetic most sites skip.
That is the whole biography, and it is deliberately short. There is no certification behind this, no years-in-the-industry claim, no expert panel. What there is: manuals read, specifications compiled, arithmetic done and shown, and every source cited with the date it was read.
We think that is worth more than a borrowed credential would be, partly because you can check it. The method is written out in full, formulas included, so an error is findable in about a minute.
What this site will not do
Claim to have tested anything. We have paddled none of this gear. It says so on every page that ranks anything, in the same size type as everything else.
Invent a number. Where a manufacturer does not publish a figure, our tables say "Not published" and stay empty. Not an estimate, not a figure carried across from a competitor's table, not an inference from a similar product.
Publish a price we have not verified. Prices render only from a live data feed. When there is no live price, the button says "Check price on Amazon" rather than a number. There is no path in this site's code to a remembered price.
Fabricate reviews or ratings. There are no testimonials here, no star ratings and no scores out of ten, because we have nothing honest to base any of them on.
Write a comparison whose buy button cannot exist. A model only becomes a ranked pick if it is currently sold.
How it is funded
Amazon affiliate commission. If you buy through a link here we earn a percentage at no extra cost to you. The disclosure page sets out exactly how that works, and every page carrying a buy link says so above the first one.
Every product on this site links to Amazon under the same Associates tag, so there is no higher-paying merchant to steer anyone toward. If that ever changes, the disclosure page will say so before any link does.
Get in touch
Corrections, suggestions and arguments are all welcome at info@strokeandstern.com or through the contact form. Spec corrections especially: manufacturers change figures between model years and being told is much better than being wrong.
Stroke & Stern is published by Slate Mill Group.