Comes on three sizes. This was the large and is 96 gallons. I’d guess it’s good for up to 250-260 pounds without gear.
I paddled the nomad for half a season. Didn’t actually get more than about 10 or 15 days in it on class 4 but spent a lot of time on it none the less.
After breaking my machno I bought a large nomad. I was pretty excited about it. The warranty, outfitting, plastic and over-all workhorse reputation of these things was appealing.
Rolling: easy enough, not as easy as the machno.
Outfitting + comfort: best in the business.
Stability: primary stability is not abundant; secondary stability is good. I was expecting the stability to be better given it’s size.
Boofability: this is where it shines for me! Very easy to boof. Takes the mantle off the stomper as easiest boofer.
Catchyness: not even a little bit. (This was the problem to me though)
Maneuverability: pretty good. It’s a very wishy washy, go-kart-on-an-ice-rink feel. It needs constant input. CONSTANT INPUT. It really got on my nerves. The lack of tracking became intolerable for me. I paddle medium volume canadian class 4. This is not what the boat is for. If I was still in Scotland I probably would have had a different experience. It does boof really well, it gets to where it’s going and it is predictable and intuitive to a point. You have to be very precise with the angle of the boat when surfing. It doesn’t like to surf. It doesn’t like to carve. On the other hand, it absolutely demolishes holes, rocks, drops (especially) and every low volume feature imaginable. It really comes into its own when the gradient of the river is turned up. That’s what this boat is for! I’d recommend this to anyone that either only cares about staying upright, or is paddling low volume runs or steeper stuff pretty much exclusively. The best way I can describe my maneuverability experience is: it kept me upright, but it spun me around plenty.
Speed: it’s a fast boat, in a different way. If there was a torque vs horsepower debate on creekers; this would be a great poster-boy for torque. If I made a mistake in the machno and ended up going through something as opposed to over, I would lose more than half of my speed. This thing kept going. Over, under, through, the nomad does not give a fuck. It’s going downhill! Sometimes there is nothing the river, nor the Paddler can do about that. I kept having to make a deliberate effort to slow it down in the slow water between features. It carries speed really well. It’s not a fast accelerating boat. It needs the help of gravity. When it gets that help: it charges.
All that said; this boat doesn’t need speed to perform. This is the nomads party feature. It can deal with remarkable situations at a crawling pace. If you are the type of boater that isn’t pedal-to-the-metal then the nomad is worth your time. It will do the charging for you.
Surfing and ferrying: not good. Not what it’s for either. It wants to spin and go downstream. Needs a lot of input or a very skilled/strong paddler to keep a fine-tuned upstream angle.
I kept getting stupid amounts of water in this thing. After much head scratching I figured out that it was the pool of water around the cockpit rim that was getting sucked into the boat via the little slots in the back of the cockpit rim that accommodate the back band suspending webbing straps.
So this boat wasn’t for me. I thought I’d love it. I paddled a Shiva for years and got on fine with that. Maybe I’ve changed or maybe I was paddling in a different country back then. It’s a really good boat in so many ways but the way boils, Eddy lines, slow/ghost water, and big water affected me in it was rather infuriating. It made me feel like a bad paddler; and that’s probably true but none the less I didn’t like it. I really loved many things about it but the type of water I paddle just didn’t compliment this boat. I think it’s gonna need a very different type/better paddler and different terrain than I can give it.
This sounds like a bad review. I know excellent seasoned paddlers that swear by this thing. I don’t want you to think it’s a terrible design as it is quite the opposite. I do want to be honest and clear about my own experience.
I would still recommend this boat. Not to a beginner, and certainly not to anyone that is coming from boats with edges. But for those who are running drops, steep and low volime stuff, want a boat that will probably never break, or a bigger paddler that doesn’t want a longer creeker, this is worth a try. It IS a good boat. Just not for me.
As a wee added extra to this review: I got this pinned in a tight canyon. Front of the boat on the right wall, back of the boat on the left. Bad swim and shitey climb out but that’s another story. Both the ends were inverted by the time it popped out. No puncture to the plastic. I left it out in the sun for a week and it fixed itself. If that was another brand of kayak it would have snapped like a twig.
There you go. This guy didn’t like the newmad. I feel like as paddlers it’s almost treason to say a bad word about the nomad as the sport owes a lot to this boat.
If you were looking for a machno-newmad comparison: sorry it took me till the bottom of the review. The machno is the better boat. I say that taking into account the questionable plastic and the outfitting. I’d have the machno over the newmad every day of the week. I should have waited for the warranty replacement.
The Ramblings Of Rob 