Care and maintenance · Kayaking
Looking after a kayak, and the two things that actually destroy them
A plastic kayak that is used every weekend and stored properly will outlast one that is used twice a year and left on a lawn. The damage in this hobby is almost all done while the boat is not in use — sun on the hull, weight on the wrong point, water left inside over a winter — and it is cumulative and irreversible. None of the prevention is difficult and most of it is free.
Polyethylene, which most recreational and white-water kayaks are made of, degrades under ultraviolet light. It goes chalky, loses flexibility and eventually becomes brittle enough to crack on an impact it would have shrugged off when new. This is not fast and it is not reversible, and a boat kept outdoors uncovered for several summers is measurably weaker than one that was not.
The second is deformation. Polyethylene is not rigid; it takes a set. A boat resting its whole weight on two narrow bars, or on its hull on a hard floor, will develop a flat spot or a dent that stays. Warm weather accelerates it dramatically — a boat on a roof rack in summer sun is the classic case.
- Kills the plastic
- Sunlight, over years
- Changes the shape permanently
- Point loading, especially warm
- Kills the fittings
- Salt left on, and grit in the seals
- Splits the hull
- Water left inside through a freeze
- Indoors or shaded, first choice — A garage, a shed, under a deck, anywhere out of direct sun. If it must live outside, a proper cover matters more than anything else on this list — and a tarpaulin laid directly on the hull traps moisture, so it needs to be off the surface with air moving under it.
- On its side, supported wide — Broad straps or padded supports under the bulkheads, taking the weight along the strongest part of the boat, with the hull off the ground. On its side or upside down rather than resting on the hull. Wide support spreads the load; two narrow bars concentrate it.
- Not hanging by the grab handles — They are for carrying, not for supporting the boat for six months. They will pull, and a torn-out fitting is a hull repair.
- Empty, with the hatches loosened — Water left in a hull through a freeze can split it. Leaving the hatch covers off or loose over a long storage stops the seals taking a permanent compression set and lets the inside dry.
- Rinse it, especially after salt water — Salt is not much of a problem for the plastic and is a considerable one for everything metal on the boat, for deck lines, and for rudder and skeg mechanisms. Fresh water over the whole thing, including inside the cockpit and into the skeg box.
- Rinse yourself out of it too — Sand and grit in a skeg slider or a rudder track is the usual cause of a mechanism that jams, and the usual cause of a hatch that leaks is grit on the sealing surface rather than a worn seal.
- Drain it properly, then let it dry — Water sitting under a foam seat block or in a bulkheaded compartment is what makes a boat smell and what starts corrosion on fittings from the inside.
- Check the deck lines and the seals occasionally — Deck line and perimeter line are safety equipment — they are what somebody grabs — and they degrade in sunlight faster than the hull does. Rubber hatch seals perish and harden. Both are cheap to replace and both are checked by looking, once a season.
- Scratches and gouges: normal, ignore most of them — Plastic hulls are meant to be dragged over things. Surface scratching is cosmetic. A gouge deep enough to have raised a burr can be trimmed flush so it does not catch, and that is usually the whole job.
- A dent: sometimes fixable, with warmth — Polyethylene has some memory. A dent left in the sun, or gently warmed, will often come most of the way back — sometimes helped from inside. This works far better on a recent dent than on one that has been there a year.
- A crack or a hole: a specialist job — Plastic welding a polyethylene hull is a real repair that a shop can do well and that goes badly when improvised. It is not a job for an adhesive: almost nothing bonds reliably to polyethylene, which is exactly why it makes good boats.
- Composite boats are a different subject entirely — Fibreglass, kevlar and carbon hulls do not have the ultraviolet problem in the same way, do not deform, and repair by a completely different process with materials that need ventilation and care. If your boat is composite, none of the plastic advice above applies to the hull.
Questions this guide answers
Listed so you can tell at a glance whether this is the page you wanted. HobbyHQ keeps one guide per question family rather than a page per phrasing.
- how should I store a kayak
- does sunlight damage a kayak
- how do I stop a kayak hull deforming
- how do I look after a kayak in winter
- do I need to rinse a kayak after sea paddling
- how do I look after kayak hatch seals
- can you repair a plastic kayak
Part of Kayaking. Last reviewed 2026-08-22.