[img]images/boats/ninjaside-thumb.jpg[/img]Boats Database: Rainbow Ninja

New rodeo kayak with flat disc and rails for impressive speed in all aerial moves and an optimal precision in cartwheels and carving. Optimal handling also for the heavier paddlers and people with large feet. Completely renewed outfitting.

mmmm nice

The spine on the inside looks the same as a Wave Sport one. The front part of the seat looks the same too. Hmmm. Never heard of Rainbow kayaks. Anybody got any experience with them?



Check it out.

Rainbow exists for more than 15 years. Once I paddled a DNA (about 10 - 15 years ago) and it felt right for those years (Eskimo Kendo, Perception Whippet,...) . The problem was i couldn't find a dealer and it's still hard to find one. Those days it was a affordable alternative. Finally i bought a Eskimo Kendo.

BAS

Gee, 15 years is quite some time. Pretty interesting. Thanks for the post.

Ciao,

Rainbow is a famous brand in italy.

I think that almost all italian paddler has used a Rainbow kayak in his life.
The brand is famous to be a company that produce product with a good compromise between quality and price.

Practically sometimes it produces very good boats, sometimes very bad one.

Ninja and Rave are in the good boat list.
I mean, I'm not a rodeo player but in the past years lot of good italian playboaters used Ninja.

I can say it is very comfortable, lot of space inside, it has very good stability and it is nice to use even as a river runner, if you don't weigth too much, otherwise there are many people using Rave as a river runner.

Material and finiture are not the best (forget Dagger) but at the end are not so bad.

Nowadays it is quite difficult to find it in the used market and there are rumors Rainbow stopped production (but i don't trust this information)

Unfortunately don't know where to find Rainbow kayaks abroad

Ciao

AdrianTregoning wrote:

Gee, 15 years is quite some time. Pretty interesting. Thanks for the post.

I think the DNA came out in about 1997. Somehow this page on Playak refers to it as from 1999 (playak.com/kayaks.php?years%5B%5D=1999) but I seem to remember that the guy I bought my first ww-boat from (in about 1997) was thinking of getting himself a DNA.

Later, in 1998 when that 2-nd hand ww boat was totally shredded I went for a test drive of numerous boats, including a DNA. So it has definitely been around in 1998.

Possible, the DNA wasn't there first boat at all. I tested one in Augsburg but can't remember which year, but it should be about 10 years ago. Can't even remember when i bought my first WW-boat. D'oh i'm getting old.
grtz,

Yes, they made other boats before DNA
They started with
Monsoon
Reaction
Vector
Don't know which came first.
Vector is still used in some kayak school althoug is an old fashioned boat (280cm or greater) and at the period it was considered as a good boat
Then tey produced a kind of squirt boat, the Circus, which has been my very first kayak. That was definitely an orrible boat, 280cm very unbalanced, almost impossible to use in river.
DNA has been derived by Circus but with a much more balanced shape, it has been the boat of my first class IV and i really loved it.
I wrote a review on the kayak database with a picture of myself with DNA on Sesia river