ZET Kayaks Director

Outfitting and Sizing

ZET did a great job with the outfitting in the Director. It isn’t the prettiest or the fanciest, but the outfitting is dead simple and comfortable. The seat is just a shaped block of foam on a very stiff Y-shaped plastic frame, the hip pads have a simple shim and nylon strap system to position pads, and the back band is another piece of shaped foam. I really liked that the backband pad was free-floating on the webbing that fed into the ratchet system, so if I didn’t evenly tighten the ratchets, I could center the backband after tightening.

The forward bulkhead / footrest is simple and easy to adjust, and follows the same sort of design as most creek boats, except for Jackson kayaks. The front and rear pillars were stiff and well locked in, and it looks like ZET took a page out of the Jackson design book, using a tab or plastic from the inside of the cockpit rim to fix the pillars in place.

There are two sets of criss-crossed bungees in front of the seat, one on the Y-shaped seat frame, and one on the front center pillar. These provided a great place to put a wide variety of things, but I appreciated being able to put any size water bottle and any size rope I wanted in between my legs. It was great to be able to keep a throw rope and a water bottle accessible at all times. In the few true hole-beatings I took in the Director, I never had a water bottle or rope dislodge from the bungees.

The backband is suspended behind the seat by another network of bungees, which do a great job of keeping the backband in place, and have small clips that you can undo for getting gear in and out of the stern. There is no shortage of space in the stern of the Director and at my weight (~210 lbs) I would feel comfortable packing several days worth of gear into the back without feeling too overloaded. If you’re over 6 feet tall and 200 lbs, the Director should be a great fit.

I have, however, heard conflicting reports from people in the 5’8”, 140-160 lbs range. One paddler mentioned how she thought that the boat felt really manageable for her despite its size, while another thought it felt significantly bigger than other 90-95 gallon boats. If you’re a medium sized paddler who likes to use big volume boats, it would be best to see if you can demo one before buying.

Safety Features and Durability

The Director has all of the safety features you’d expect to see in a creek boat: a large cockpit, five well-placed metal grab loops, and a stiff seat and pillars to resist folding. ZET does not incorporate the step-out center pillar that Dagger and Wave Sport boats have, however, which is something that I personally like.

ZET uses a proprietary molding technique, Zelezny Technology, that they claim makes the boat stronger and lighter. The US importer informed me that this molding technique primarily consists of letting the boat cool slowly in the mold (as opposed to pulling the boat from the mold and quickly cooling it with a jig inside), which helps it retain its shape better and requires less material. Because large blocks of hot aluminum cool slowly, this means that the ZET factory can only produce a few boats a day. I haven’t been able to confirm this anywhere in ZET’s literature, however, so take it with a grain of salt.

The boat is certainly light for its size, but its overall strength is tougher to nail down. The boat came to me used and had obviously been paddled a lot. It did not, however, show any signs of oil-canning or thinning, and it took the wear I gave it in 20 days in stride. The evidence does not go against ZET’s durability claims here, but I didn’t have enough time with the kayak to say with much certainty that these boats are invincible.

I did lose a screw that holds a grab loop in place while I had the boat, but this can easily be remedied with some threadlock or a trip to the hardware store.

ZET offers a competitive 2 year warranty to back up their durability claims. David discusses the warranty in a bit more depth in his Raptor review, but if ZET is good about honoring their warranty, it would be an improvement over most other warranties sold with boats in the US market.

Dryness

When paddling rivers where I regularly had water coming up over the cockpit rim, I found that the Director was not as dry as I had hoped. ZET goes to some lengths to avoid excess holes in the boat, but the cockpit rim does not seem to have been subjected to the same forethought.

The Director leaked less than my Nomad, but the Nomad has been compared to a sieve by more than one paddler. I had more water in my Director than I would have expected for a boat that is billed as being very dry. I made it through the the 6-mile Green Truss section of the White Salmon and the Upper Wind River without emptying the boat, but I had an uncomfortable amount of water at the take outs.

I paddled this boat solely with an IR Lucky Charm skirt with an extra-large deck, which is usually one of the driest rubber rand skirts around. It could be that a different rand design would do better on the Director’s cockpit, but I did not have the opportunity to test this theory.

Learning Paddlers

For new or progressing paddlers who aspire to paddle challenging big water and creeks, the Director is still an excellent choice. Unlike many modern creek boats, which are too forgiving, the Director allows paddlers to get a feel for edges and learn proper eddy turns and peel-outs. It will also provide an excellent platform for improvement, so when you start to paddle harder rivers it will still treat you well.

The Director won’t make everything feel easy like a more forgiving Stomper or a Nomad will, but it will demand the kind of good technique that will benefit your paddling for years to come. If you are looking for a stable and forgiving ride, then you will be better off purchasing something less demanding than the Director.

Bottom Line

The ZET Kayaks Director is a large creek boat with a unique design that makes it very appealing to larger paddlers who spend most of their time on higher-volume rivers and creeks. The Director needs to be paddled aggressively and the bigger the whitewater gets, the more fun the Director is to paddle. It does not reward passive paddling, and often asks a little more of the paddler than many modern creek boats.

Even though the Director is not dead easy to paddle, I think it would suit larger paddlers who want to get into the sport and progress quickly. The design provides enough feedback to learn proper eddy-turns and peel-outs, but it is still forgiving enough that true beginners will not flip in every crosscurrent they encounter.