Kayak Bytes

I finally got a chance to get together with Tony his wooden Sea Ranger, and what a day it was! Besides just a particularly pleasant day of paddling, I got to play with the hot new boat, and then see one of the most amazing and gratifying things I’ve ever witnessed.

We unloaded and made ready to hit the water. Tony said “wanna try ‘er out before we get going?” As if you have to ask me twice. Okay, where do we start? How ’bout here: I’m a devout Outer Island driver, totally in love with it, and well into my second season with that design, so that’s why there’s gonna be constant references to it.

Climbing aboard was very much like what I’m used to. I’ve paddled a Sea Ranger once before, but it was Steve Ullrich’s skin-on-frame folder. Which means tight ocean cockpit and internal framework. Which means shimmying in feet first, and judicious wriggling to get confidently situated. Tony’s yak makes a dramatic departure from Tom Yost’s original concept in that it is strip-built. Which means it’s perfectly hollow inside, which means there’s much more wiggle room; and it also sports a Guillemot cockpit so I was able to seat myself the way I’m used to. At once I noticed slightly less primary stability than the OI, but tons of secondary stability. Not bad for a 19″ wide boat!

Taking off, it was easy to be surprised with the eager acceleration, even though it was anticipated. Tracking wasn’t an issue. Leaning into carving, or edged, turns was interesting, in that you expect a boat this narrow to be a real knee-hanger. But it just sits on a vast reserve of secondary stability in an incredibly solid way, and I actually had to prod it past that point to get some real leaned-way-over action going on.

A favorite maneuver of mine is the low braced edging turn, whereas you get up some speed, flip the yak onto its side using your severest J-lean, plant a water-ski-planing low brace down, and then savor a deliciously drawn out skidding turn on the glide. Well, this is the first boat I can remember ever doing that in that didn’t require the brace part of it. Edge over onto it’s secondary stability, and Granny could enjoy it the first time without having ever heard of a brace at all. I leaned it further out and braced, of course, in an endeavor to extract more out if it, but nothing was really gained. It did perfectly well with just the lean onto the secondary stability. But leaned way over on its side, it felt just like the OI except that the OI requires that sort of leaning to get anything out of it at all.

The OI is a strong tracking boat, and absolutely demands the severest leans for any real efficiency in turning. Works basically like this: the more you lean, the more you turn; no lean, no turn. How far do you dare to lean? The Sea Ranger turns without any such stolid insistence on your part. Pirouettes may be done leaned or not, makes no huge difference, and they happen quickly. In the OI, you either lean severely or hire harbor tugs, take your pick. Turns at speed? Oh lordy, the Sea Ranger has a radius of like ten feet at full speed ahead, whereas the OI is easily three times that… assuming a well-practiced technique in the OI.

Next thing to try was a sculling high brace. No problem, and recovery is certainly a snap. Okay, it’s hot here in Texas, time to get good n’ wet! No problem rolling, either. Comes right up, just like the OI, which is a super-sweet rolling boat if there ever was one. Variants of the basic roll present no difficulty, either; I did the butterfly, shotgun, behind-the-head, and vertical sculling rolls… all were precisely as in the OI. And this was without any cockpit outfitting whatsoever, except for the foot braces Tony kindly added for my short-legged benefit. I’d prefer a little padding in there, at strategic locations, of course, but I never really missed it in making this boat perform its tricks.

The boat is super fast, very responsive, and a ton of fun to paddle; and it compared startlingly similarly to the OI in many ways. It’s easier to talk about differences, and those were pretty much in the tracking and primary stability areas. The OI has more primary, but less secondary, in my opinion so far (haven’t had a ton of time in the Sea Ranger yet, y’ know). But rolls, balance braces, etc, were routine for me in it.

Tony and I found a sandbar for a little leg-stretching after a couple hours on the water, and when I noted that it looked like a perfect place to practice the rolling thing… well, the day got even more interesting in a hurry. Tony used the 12″ of water and perfect sandy bottom to practice hip-snap and lean-back recovery. It all looked good, so I suggested we move to deeper water, where I could stand next to his boat and spot him. “How about just give me a bow instead, can we do that?” Why, certainly! “Hmmm, this is interesting; I’ve never gone all the way over before”, he said. Are you ready? (I’ve seen this guy in action before, and so wasn’t too worried…) “No time like the present”, he replied, and galoosh. A good looking sweep, a good looking hip snap, a perfect layback and he was up! WOW!! I applauded, and he tried it again. Back up. A third time: back up again! Holy Sheeeee, uh, yeah!! True story folks: first three roll attempts, three successful rolls… in a row!

I noted that it was a bit of a struggle, that his paddle was flexing quite a bit during, and all, but hey, he was coming up so no complaints. None at all — it’s a mere matter of practice, practice, practice from here on out. Hot DAMN! I won’t talk about what happened next to Mister Big Head All Of A Sudden, but I should probably note what happened previously. I loaned Tony two CD’s: the Kent Ford rolling vid, and Jay Babina’s “First Roll”, plus the Derrick Hutchinson book “The Eskimo Roll.” He’s a studious kind of guy, has to research a thing to death before he’s ready to try it for himself. A lot like me, only much better at it. And by golly, the results are probably going to surpass anything I ever see again if I live to be 101.

The boat’s way cool, but I’m just so happy about seeing him roll like that, well, someone stop me, that’s all. Incredible, wonderful. And it couldn’t possibly happen to a nicer guy. I still can’t believe it. I don’t think the boat has all that much to do with whether you manage a roll or not, but Tony wisely noted that “if it makes you feel like you can, then it probably helps quite a bit.” No argument here!

Cheers,
Kurt

This entry was posted on Friday, July 14th, 2006 at 8:15 pm and is filed under Kayaks, SeaRanger. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.