One benefit to plastic boats...

They can survive a great white shark bite and barely show damage!
ftw.usatoday.com/2019/10/kayaker-survive...k-encounter-catalina

This was south of me about 70 miles. Sounds like the shark was just investigating, didnt like the taste of plastic and moved on.  Im quite impressed how little the boat was damaged. Looks like they could have paddled on indefinitely almost.

Luckily I suspect the large predators like the deep water of and upwelling currents of the Channel Islands vs near shore waters. Makes you think though, what do you do if a shark bites the tail off my boat similar to this story from last year.
www.surfski.info/latest-news/story/1676/...-shark-incident.html

That would get the juices flowing! Thanks for sharing 

Oh man.  I have a sea kayaking friend here in Cape Town who had an encounter with a GW near the Simon's Town harbour some years back.  His full carbon kayak was hit so hard that he was boosted right out of the cockpit into the water and had to remount... 

But the hull wasn't significantly damaged.

(He runs a sea kayak touring company from Simon's Town, so he doesn't tell the story very often, haha!) 

Fortunately (or sadly, depending on where you stand on the environment), the GW sharks seem to have disappeared from Cape Town (or False Bay at any rate) where they've been seen less and less frequently to the point where the beach shark spotting program has zero confirmed GW sightings in 2019.