You will perhaps find some people on this forum who are proponents of canoe travel so I will talk a bit about kayaking. My experience has been almost exclusively sea kayaking in traditional craft, sometimes in fairly rough conditions, where they work quite well. A little bit of practice will make you competent to handle most normal conditions.

You can easily pack enough gear for extended trips. A properly packed, fully loaded kayak is actually more stable than an unloaded craft. I simply put my normal backpacking gear in watertight bags and have at it. The available load capacity of a kayak is much more than I would ever want to backpack, so I have thrown in some luxuries when kayaking that I would never carry on my back. I believe canoes have even more capacity, so if you can handle the portages, you can probably bring along the good silver and china to go with the vintage wines.

Today you have a spectrum of slender, pointy-at-both-ends watercraft ranging from traditional kayaks to sit upon kayaks to decked canoes to traditional canoes, so you can pick whatever suits your needs best.

Both craft require caution and prudence when the weather kicks up. Conditions on inland lakes can be just as bad, or worse, as the open sea. Time to make camp and console yourself with that vintage wine.