BIG air
boater shootout" concept. With this year’s hottest kayaks comes an elite bundle of aerial tricks, tricks that only the pros have mastered but will soon be in the quiver of every weekend pad- dler. Rapid boat tests typically involve average Joe paddlers— people who buy boats—rather than sponsored pros. It works very well, however to properly test these new aerial boats we needed paddlers who could donkey flip, loop, helix and throw huge aerial blunts on command, not just by shit luck.
Using team paddlers for boat testing could be a touchy subject for some obvious reasons. With a pro paddler from every team, however, biases even out in the wash. Working around the schedules of pro pad- dlers is a lot like herding cats. But between photo shoots, instructional clinics, travel and a "real" job, we managed to gather seven team paddlers and their boats on three different days at two different locations. So who did we get? Liquidlogic team paddler Patrick Camblin hot off a huge win at the Hawaii Sur Rhone in France, stopped by while on tour filming with Young Gun Productions. Eric Gautier paddles locally for Pyranha and was the only expecting father in the test and the only one with a real job. Filmmaker and Riot design and development guru Corran Addison—the man behind the Air 45—was in the Bahamas, so we caught up with him a week later at Lachine. Cover boy, Necky’s Billy Harris was home in time from a fifth finish in Austria to bring out the new Vibe. Canadian Team paddler and Bliss Stick distribu- tor Joey Hitchins snuck out of a day of teaching to join the test. Transformer designer, Team Wave Sport paddler, video producer Eric ‘EJ’ Jackson was on the Ottawa teaching clinics for Ottawa Kayak School. And just back from leading a Liquid Skills week of rivers,
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squirt champion, inventor of the tricky whu and Dagger paddler Brendan Mark rounded out the squad. Before we hit the water the pros decided on nine characteristics defining this year’s stock of new-school playboats. Their focus was on the five aerial wave and hole characteristics: bounce, pop out of hole, hull speed, carving, and release—hard carve to aerial. However the guys agreed the test wouldn’t be complete without including all aspects of freeboating: looseness on a wave, slicey hole play, all-river performance and outfitting.
The better you are the less important a boat design becomes. —Corran Addison
Evaluating your paddling skills and style is the first step to using the results of our pro-boat test. Corran Addison put it pretty well: "The better you are, the less important a design becomes. A truly proficient paddler is able to make any kayak work to some degree of competence. The lower your skill level, the more important it is that the boat can compensate for your shortcomings."
Look to boats that score high in areas you are working on: Why not buy a boat that will bounce or spin for you? If you don’t intend to run rivers or if you’ve completely dialed cartwheels, you should look past low scores in these categories.
Top PROS Test HOTTEST Freestyle Boats Never before has it been as relevant to introduce our "pro
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