Jackson Kayaks Back-bands.

Team Athlete: Billy Harris

Back-bands are a critical part of kayak performance yet quite often overlooked in terms of their function.  Having a back-band working well for you is forgotten about, but a back-band that blows can ruin a trip pretty quickly.  More often than not, the more moving parts a back-band has, the more unreliable the back band will be.

Now for all the fat cats who keep getting new boats every 6 months it’s not much of an issue for them.  However, the 9 to 5 crowd depends on gear that holds up over time.  Back-bands from Jackson are not perfect,  unfortunately, because there is no ‘perfect’ way to hold you in the boat yet make it easy to get out / support you when you lean back and move out of the way when you REALLY lean back. (all at the same time) To say JK back bands are close, is however, quite accurate.

Take a look at the overall picture, on comparison to other back-bands, ours have many advantages.  They are easy to fix, easy to replace on the river.  There is 2 ropes to rely on in case of breakage.  One blows, the other can stand buy, tie a knot fixing the break and you’re off down the river.  You can fix them in any country at any time with a just about any similar rope, a stick and a knot.  Back-bands by Jackson Kayak are comfortable and downright dependable.

Ever find the ropes slip?

Some of the older models have many many hours of fun time on them, they will over time crush or ‘burn’  the rope.  This crushing of the core will make the rope thinner and shiny – and also make it slip.

If you find your back-band rope is slipping.  Pull the rope knot located behind the seat hanger with the plastic washer attached till your cleat side knot is tight to the cleat.  Pull out the knot on the seat side and make a solid knot farther up the rope say 2 or 3 inches.  This will adjust the location of the squashed rope out of the cleat and give you back the rope diameter that came with the boat for no more slippage.  You can also call Jackson Kayak or your local dealer for more yellow and black rope, or simpler still drop by Canadian Tire or Walmart and buy some similarly sized rope there to replace it with, just make sure to take a photo of the system before you pull both ropes out so you’ll be able to reassemble it just like it came.

For more information or help feel free to contact me at:

B3HARRIS@GMAIL.COM

Billy Harris