The SrchrF16S&G was offered to me by Gerald as the answer to my overnight river paddling/fishing excursions needs. After several of these trips I discovered I had needs that my current sit-on-top plastic kayak were not meeting, namely speed and gear storage. Nearly all of my trips involve a return trip to the put-in and so half the trip is done upstream, and half is done downstream. I needed a boat that would perform well both into wind and current, as well as with wind or current. We knew that length would solve both of my problems, speed and load storage, but portability could not be sacrificed. Many of my trips involve shallow water portages, some of them as long as a quarter of a mile, and some are uphill. My SOT weighs less than 50 pounds, and I was not willing to see an increase in that weight for my new boat.