The Paddler Autumn/Fall issue 2017

Now I’m hardly going to be that guy that
sits here and tells you that paddling sixfoot
freestyle kayaks isn’t a load of fun. I
was one of the main protagonists of the
short boat and planing hull revolution,
and this revolution happened because
the short planing hulled boats opened up
more and more possibilities in certain
kinds of river features.
Photo: Pat Keller
In fact, if you have ‘that perfect feature’ on your
run, it’s pretty hard to beat the fun times that
even average paddlers can have.
But therein lies the catch: ‘perfect feature’!
This does not have to mean a large ‘Lachines
waves’ or ‘rock Island’ style holes. It could be the
perfectly formed little loop-hole at the artificial
slalom course, or an exciting little wave hole on
an otherwise uninteresting river run.
In theory, and for many people, the short boat
revolution was a fantastic one. But as Winston
Churchill so deftly said, “However beautiful the
strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.”
And the results have been trickling in over the
last decade.
Freestyle kayaks
I’ve already touched on the problem. Freestyle
kayaks are a whole lot of fun in that perfect
feature. But that pretty much leaves the rest of
the river run as a battle to overcome constant
verticality, missing dozens of on-the-fly one hit
waves, and essentially just flip-flopping down the
main current in what amounts to sitting in a
plastic turd (unless you’re on that perfect feature).
And so, paddlers grab their other boat; the
creeker.
We find ourselves in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in
Wonderland, asking, “Would you tell me, please,
which way I ought to go from here?” The answer, as
Cat so eloquently states, “Depends a good deal on
where you want to get to.”
This is why people are paddling their creek boats
on easy class 3 runs, and there has been a recent
scurry to buy up older longer pre-2000
playboats out of ex-paddlers back yards: Craigslist
has become the treasure trove of modern
long boater.
ThePADDLER 149