In today’s episode of Brian gets an email and immediately has a panic attack, I found out that the foot braces we’ve been using for 15 years are being discontinued with no backstock to buy which has me scrambling to find an alternate solution.
I’ve actually wanted to replace this brand for quite a while now due quality control problems and issues with company, but they have a couple features that I can’t find anywhere else.
The most important one is that they have five mounting holes where other braces just have two. This is important to me because I need my attachment to withstand the full force of my body if I slam into them while pitch polling in the surf.
The other important feature is that the pedal sits lower than the actual track and angles down at about 15°, Which really makes a difference because the only good mounting surface I have is the bottom of my gunwales which are fairly high in the kayak.
Another feature that matters is the width of the toe pad. These are narrower than the others I’ve seen and that’s absolutely critical because as you can see from the photos otherwise you can’t slide the gear bag in and out of the bow. (shown is our normal Harmony Slidelock vs the similar Smart Track.
And finally there’s adjustability from the cockpit. This was especially important to me in my former kayaking life when I would launch through the surf at dawn and would often stay out until I had to find my way home with the patterns of the street lights in front of my house. The only way you can stay comfortable for 14 hours in a kayak is to be able to move your foot position around during the day, and often times landing wasn’t really an option.
So I’m finding it extremely hard to find all those features in a single foot brace. I actually love these SmartTracks, very well-made but only two mounting holes, and the foot pads are too big and set at the wrong angle. I have about five other brands here none of which work either and I’m having a few more shipped to me next week to try.
We’ve had to take the standalone foot brace off of our website but we will still be including them in our kits until we find a replacement brand.
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See the original post and discussion here.
