AIRE Wave Destroyer 15' Cataraft

Note that this size is now a special-order item, and the lead time is around six months.

AIRE Wave Destroyer 15, Made in USA, big water 15 foot cat tubes are available in blue, dark green, orange, lime, teal, red or yellow. Sometimes white or purple can be had if you are willing to wait a month or so. Pricing includes shipping to any lower-48 address. Price is tubes only! Our shopping cart will try to charge UPS, but we will deduct it from the total before capturing your funds.

AIRE's Wave Destroyers come in four sizes, this one being the longest. They are conceived for high-flow rivers with continuous rapids, like the North Fork Payette in Idaho near their factory. Many of you who run rivers that tend to be pool & drop should perhaps stick with the faster Jaguarundi or Ocelot models, especially if the "pools" go on for a long distance. Wave Destroyers may work great for Cataract Canyon when you are in the rapids, but on the long flat sections these will be slower than any other tubes in our Cataraft section. You simply cannot decrease the waterline, increase rocker, and not expect to have a slower boat. It doesn't matter if it's a canoe, rowboat, raft, inflatable kayak, or set of cat tubes. Longer narrower hulls with smooth transitions at the ends will always be faster than something with a shorter, wider, more angled profile. That's why a lake paddler should not purchase a whitewater canoe.

The Wave Destroyer 15's payload capacity is about the same as the 14' AIRE Ocelot model (900 pounds0, but these would rarely be used to carry heavy loads since it would defeat what they were built for. If your rivers are in the nature of continuous class IV or V, or if they are often at very high flows when you run them, the various sizes of Wave Destroyers are well worth looking into. The high rocker allows them to deal better with large vertical drops (where they won't pencil into the foam so deeply) and huge back-curling waves, and if you don't need a cat for anything but solo or tandem day trips, AIRE has added two new smaller sizes last year. The bow rise on the fifteen footer is 32", and the weight per pair is 78 pounds. Tube diameter is 22". They have replaceable lift handles and grey frame chafers like most other AIRE tubes. Also see the description for the 14' Wave Destroyer.