ESQUIF ZOOM Boat Insider
Boat specs Construction: Royalex Length: 9’ 5” Width: max 28”, gunwale 25” Height: bow 21”, centre 16’’, stern 22’’ Shape: asymmetric, shallow arc, sharp edges, including APS Rocker: 5’’ Weight: 39 lbs Color: Purple Price (2003): $1,235 Cdn, $900 US Outfit: $335 Cdn, $245 US Outfit installed: $435 Cdn, $320 US
Scott MacGregor, spring on the Upper Black River, Ontario. photo Paul Mason.
I’d been in the new Esquif
Zoom for about 10 minutes and was already sick of explaining the striking APS design. “Well,” I began in my best schoolteacher
voice, “the Zoom is an advanced paddler’s boat, so Esquif moulded in these pockets so beginners can glue in official regulation- sized volleyballs as sponsons.” This of course was a complete lie, but it worked like a charm. She nodded, smiled and paddled away.
The Active Pry System (APS) is always the first thing paddlers notice about the new 9 ft 5 in Zoom. The boat has so much flare and tumble- home that the large dimples in the hull just behind the seat are provided so that during a stern pry you’re able to fit your paddle shaft into the dimple to reach your blade further under the boat. Clever. Whether you become an APS believer or think it’s butt ugly, the dimples don’t seem to have any negative effects on perform- ance. In fact they actually displace a little water from the cockpit and add some rigidity to the sides of the boat.
The Zoom is a radical departure from Esquif’s trademark double-chine hull on their Nitro, Detonator and Blast. “Our double-chine concept produces a stable boat to bring intermediate
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paddlers to a higher
level,” explains
Jacques Chasse, Esquif’s president. “With the Zoom I decided to design something for the cream of the cream, for the real expert paddler or the technical open boater.” Chasse brought pro paddlers and boat designers Andrew Westwood and Jeff Thuot into the project. Their combined goals for the Zoom were speed, manoeuvrability, carving and dry- ness. And they were willing to sacrifice primary
Will the Zoom be the chicken or the egg?
for solid secondary stability—not necessarily characteristics for the huge intermediate market. Producing the Zoom is a bold move for a small canoe company. I hear all the time how small the advanced playboating market is and how it’s not cost-effective to produce a high-end open canoe. It is tough to know if the Zoom will be the chicken or the egg, but maybe the reason there are so few “advanced” paddlers is because there hasn’t been a good advanced solo boat since the Dagger Ocoee. The Zoom is very narrow at the waterline and is the most initially unstable Royalex boat on the
market. Get strapped in and moving, however, and wobbliness turns to incredibly responsive edge-to-edge control—and let’s face it, advanced playboating is all done through body input and edge control. There is plenty of flare from bow to stern
resulting in a super-dry ride with outstanding secondary stability. We were able to hang on to some incredible righting pries. The Zoom is so dry and has so much secondary stability, we started to play around with the thwart lengths and wondered how narrow we could go. The Zoom is the most fun solo boat to come along in a decade. I like it a lot. It’s fast enough to run gates, dry for big water, and snappy enough for low-volume spring runs. Be warned, the Zoom isn’t for everybody and would make a disastrous first boat. Try it. But try it longer than an eddy turn or two. Give yourself long enough to feel comfort- able transferring your edges, and try surfing a short, steep wave. If after a weekend it’s still too advanced for you…try installing the volleyball sponsons.—SM
[just in: Esquif has modified the shape of their APS to accommodate more paddlers. It begins one inch farther back and is five inches longer in a new sexier tear-drop shape.]
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