The Jackson Kayak Zen 3.0 comes at a very interesting time for Jackson Kayaks and their whitewater lineup. With the advent of the Nirvana, Jackson stopped producing the Karma, leaving the Zen in a rather strange place in their lineup. The Zen really didn’t do much for medium and large boaters that the Nirvana didn’t do better., And with the Karma gone, the more forgiving side of boating was left alone. With other brands now pushing out more forgiving creeking models following hot on the heels of the production of race boats, the next generation of Zen seemed to be an inevitable progression. The new Zen isn’t likely to win many races or get many magazine cover shots. What it is going to do though is occupy many a roof rack as it is shuttled upriver to take many a boater down a river with confidence and an ear to ear grin. The new Jackson Kayak Zen 3.0 ditches much of what the previous generation of Zen had, and is instead more of a hybrid between the old Karma and the Nirvana. It has the additional rocker of the Nirvana, but with inspiration seemingly taken from the more relaxed edges of the Karma. This combination really allows the Zen to settle into the middle ground between those two boats, delivering a boat for the area of paddling that most boaters occupy. The Jackson Kayak Zen 3.0 is a compliant and confidence-inspiring boat. The extra rocker helps it carry over things like the Nirvana does, and the Karma does not. The extra volume makes the Zen forgiving where the Nirvana wasn’t and the Karma was. The smoothed out edges and triple chine line takes the forgiving nature of the Karma to the new Zen but adds in half a dash of the charging nature of the Nirvana with some additional edge. The only place this boat takes on a single model characteristic is that the new Zen is the same volume as the Karma, which in the case of the large is 103 gallons of volume. That much volume in an even shorter boat than the Karma is inevitably going to want to float high in hydraulics and provide a somewhat tanky feeling. This boat is a great boat for nearly all boaters where race-inspired boats are not. I say that in the sense that many of these race-inspired boats are meant for perfectly executed and hard-driven down very specific lines. Where race-inspired boats such as the Nirvana stomp such lines when you charged them just right, the Zen doesn’t care that you were off a little bit and maybe didn’t quite guess where that little bit of current mid-rapid was going to push you. Ever try and catch a pocket eddy, and miss, only to float downriver backward? The Zen will turn around with half the wrenching a Nirvana will take, to the point you can pretend you meant to slide out the back of that eddy. SHOP JACKSON KAYAKS Beyond this, there isn’t much else to know about the new Jackson Kayak Zen 3.0. If you aren’t familiar with the outfitting Jackson Kayaks use, it is one of the more unique features of their boats in the industry. Instead of ratcheting backbands and bulkheads secured into place with nuts and bolts through the hull, Jackson manages to design their boats without any holes other than the cockpit and the drain plug The backband is adjusted through a rope and cleat system, and the bulkhead is adjustable via a similar system. Fans of the system love it for ease of entry into the boat and ease of adjustments mid-river or between people. The process of adjusting a bulkhead is often a timely endeavor in other boats, while the Jackson is so easy to adjust that people will often “just pop their feet out” on flat sections to take a stretch. Those who dislike the system will mention that the backband sometimes pops up, which is true. If you aren’t diligent and regimented in the way you secure your back band, it can pop out. Others also dislike the wide knee position of the Jackson system. That I will wager comes down to just what fits best for what body style. Like all Jackson Kayaks before it, this boat is easy to roll. As a matter of fact, no boat has ever been advertised as anything other than easy to roll in my duration of whitewater kayaking. I will say this boat is easy to roll, but not as easy to roll as other boats in the Jackson lineup in the past. Having so much volume so high up can cause the cockpit comb or back deck to interfere with some peoples rolls, and this will mostly be affected by build. Another inevitable factor of such a large volume boat is that some people will struggle to reach around all of that extra volume to find the surface. Again, it’s all about build, and if a person struggles in this boat with such a thing, they will struggle in any other similar volume boat. About the Author: Jesse Nicola is an ACA level 4 certified Whitewater Kayak instructor who loves to playboat or shred class fun rivers, and in general enjoys chasing thrills in the outdoors on bikes, boards, and kayaks.