One of the many frustrating things about living with a serious chronic illness is not being able to test my boats. Basically my body makes poison instead of energy, so anything beyond five minutes of super gentle paddling can make it impossible to function for weeks.
As a former surf / whitewater / race / sea kayaker it’s a pretty dark way to exist. This is what I wish people understood about Covid. Getting sick or even dying isn’t what should scare you. It’s the possibility of getting Long Covid (or any other post viral condition) and permanently losing your ability to work, have a social life, recreate, or do anything else. Chronic illness sucks, trust me you don’t want it.
Anyway, I finally had the new Greenland kayak out for a couple minutes in some wind and waves and I’m extremely happy with the performance. This combination of the new fitting system, with the new size scaling system, and letting myself mix and match features from different historic kayaks (but still from the same general location and time period) has completely transformed my experience of Greenland kayaking.
It’s very hard to get acceptable modern kayak performance and comfort out of any traditional Greenland hull concept which is why there are no modern kayaks with these shapes. I took a massive risk in optimizing this kayak for edge turning performance based on the theoretical idea that I could create a much more playful boat and just edge away from the weathercocking. Shockingly, this actually worked.
Despite being firmly anchored in historic shaping parameters, the kayak is comfortable, quick, playful, and controllable. The bottom line is I love paddling this kayak which is something I have never said about any traditional arctic kayak before. It feels a bit sad that I’m not gonna be able to use it but I’m really stoked to be able to share it with people.
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