S T A N D I N G W A V E S
It’s just my job five days a week. PHOTO DARREN BAKER
ROCKET MAN SHAUN BAKER JET KAYAKS BACK INTO GUINNESS RECORDS
IT’S GOING TO BE A LONG, long time before jet kayaking becomes a huge fad for the average Joe boater. At least until innovator Shaun Baker, who was officially welcomed back into the Guin- ness Book of World Records last August for the fastest speed in a hydro-jet powered kayak at 40 kilometres an hour, can figure out how to stop from being electrocuted by his paddle. The project to add a customized 45-horsepow-
er motor into the stern of a Liquidlogic Airhead began in 2003 when he was dared by long-time friend Nick Mallabar. “Nick thought it was about the only thing that
hadn’t been done in a kayak and dared me to do it. When people said it’d never work is when I had to prove it could,” Baker says. A pioneer of big drops and nine-time U.K. na-
tional freestyle champion, Baker says he doesn’t seek out danger, but admits that people sometimes unwittingly offer it to him. “Maybe they see me as someone who will try anything. I can remember doing this sort of thing since I was a kid and the
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others used to bring me things to eat. I’ve done pretty well at avoiding hideous accidents so far, though the slug tasted pretty rank,” Baker says. Baker graced the pages of Guinness four times
since being the first paddler to be credited a verti- cal waterfall descent record at 15 metres (49 feet) in 1987, which he subsequently broke in 1996 at 20 metres. Baker still holds the record for fastest kayak land speed on snow at 63 kilometres per hour (34 miles/h) and two different world speed altitude descent records. He intends to improve his design so he can
run drops and even rip freestyle moves, but still needs to hammer out the electrical issue in the speed control switch mounted on his paddle. Meanwhile, German Bliss-stick and Adidas Sick Line team paddler Schorschi Schauf is rumoured to have started a jet kayak design of his own. “The gauntlet has been thrown down, once
again,” says Baker, the rocketman you’d think would be lonely out in space, on such a timeless flight like this.—Neil Etienne
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