apparently a Kleenex box doesn’t hold a line, slides sideways, and its square side-walls catch every little current. The high sidewalls made it difficult to roll and paddlers kept smashing their elbows on them. Luckily for these paddlers Kleenex boxes are full of tis- sues... There are tough choices to be made when designing and buying boats. Liquidlogic didn’t design the Skip and Pop to be river run- ning boats, they were made to play.
Park and Play
With most spud boats you trade sliceability for wave bounce. Not so with the Skip and Pop; they are one of the most vertically slicey and stable short boat designs. The volume drops away from the cockpit like in traditional hole boats allowing the ends to slice cleanly under- neath. Flatwater initiation and stalls are a breeze and put these boats in a small pour- over and you’re in for piles of fun. However, it took some of our intermediate testers a few tries to get used to being further down in the trough when initiating the bow. And because the ends are so short and slicey, you have to be lightening fast to stay ahead of it. As the holes got bigger true cartwheels became more just tumbling forward toward the trough. Difficult to score but balls of fun. If surfing and spinning is more your cup of
tea, there are definitely fewer waves in the world if you are paddling the Skip or Pop. Slower, green waves are just not accessible in these boats. Get them on something a little steeper or with a bit of a foam pile and they wake up into carving machines. The Skip and Pop want to be surfed off the
front edge just behind the rocker break, so get forward in an aggressive paddling position. One tester said it surfs like a watermelon seed–a quick lift of your knee and you are sharply squirting (like a seed not a squirt boat) across the wave setting up for spectacular
blunts. They are so short and the rocker so extreme you effortlessly roll up on the bow or stern and come around so quickly it is difficult to judge if you’re vertical. You quickly learn to use the edges and put less effort into every move.
Our reviewers were not seasoned pilots on the aerial frontier. We can’t tell you if they bounce better than other spud boats, and we’re not entirely sure if the pros have figured it out yet either. We can tell you that in a couple weeks in the Skip and Pop we figured out loops, bouncing, aerial blunts and are playing around with the rest. These boats are super light and learning the moves is as easy as bob- bing your hips for some bounce and then just huck’n your body in the direction you want to go–we’re still working on the timing.
Last Word To say the Skip and Pop are boats for advanced paddlers isn’t really true; what is true is that they are boats designed for paddlers wanting to play. And they are one of the few designs that excel in a hole, on a wave and in the air.
Our moaning about Liquidlogic’s outfitting
hasn’t seemed to bother owners of either a Skip or Pop. They’ve simply padded their knees and built themselves a solid fit out of foam.
With so few paddlers taking advantage of the aerial capabilities of these new boats we can’t help but wonder if Liquidlogic will let the Skip and Pop ride for another year while skills catch up to the boats.
1. Liquidlogic team paddler and local ham Matt Hamilton effortlessly balances the super light Skip on his head. Notice the smooth rocker break or transition from planing sur- face to bow and stern end.
2. The Liquidlogic seat is plenty big and the back band ratchets into the thigh braces. The foam pillar pulls out for the insertion of a chunk of foam bulkhead. There’s plenty of foot room but not quite enough knee room for some paddlers. It’s a minimal set-up by today’s multi-adjustment standards leaving paddlers to tweak it for themselves.
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