Took the new boat down to the water for a quick paddle and a couple rolls. As usual there’s lots of positive and lots of negative things to talk about here but I’m not gonna get too far into that until I get out on the water a few more times. The thing I can judge immediately though is the rolling performance:
Basically it’s identically stable and rolls about the same as my previous, less historically-accurate version of this same kayak. The bottom shape on this is a bit flatter and shallower and the chines are spread a little wider which should add a bit more stability and ‘pop’ at the finish of the roll. I think I can feel that but it’s not a meaningful difference, which doesn’t surprise me because the changes themselves weren’t very big.
It’s definitely possible to produce an even better Greenland rolling kayak, but this is usually about where I stop because the things you would do to make it roll even better start to seriously detract from the general paddling performance.
At the end here I’m demonstrating the operation of the skeg while trying very hard not to get river water in my nose! The water here is actually a lot cleaner than most people think it is but it’s still in the middle of a large city.
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