Nelo Vanquish AIR review

I bought a lightly used Vanquish AIR ten weeks ago. Since then I have logged a bit over 200km downwind and maybe twice that much on the flat. I thought I would post a real world review as there is not much online about this boat. This is a long review; the TLDR version is that the Vanquish is probably the strangest boat I have ever paddled…and yet I absolutely love it!

What is the Vanquish?
The Vanquish is Nelo’s tweak of their short and skinny 560 surfski. It has the same length and width as the 560, but has added volume in the stern in the form of chines. The concavity that Nelo added to their 2020 boats is present, but it has been made quite a bit longer. The goal according to Nelo was to preserve much of the speed of the 560, while increasing stability and maneuverability.

Cockpit:
This ski has a deep bucket. You really sit down in the ski, almost like you are wearing it. I like this overall. It gives a sense of control and stability, though as with all deep cockpit boats, remounting is a little harder, as is sitting side saddle with feet resting in the water. Ergonomics are very good in the Vanquish, basically similar to other Nelo I have paddled. There is a perceptible seat to heel drop and no noticeable hump to impede leg drive. The footplate is the standard nelo affair with ratchets to tighten or loosen the rudder lines. This all works well with no rubbing or banging of hardware. The seat itself has a relatively tight curvature at the bottom, which results in some unwanted pressure on my fairly wide sit bones. That is a me problem, not a Nelo problem, as I have that issue in many boats. I have built up the seat with contoured thin sheets of minicel foam, and comfort is improved.

New Nelo Bailer:
The way I usually mange a DeBrito or epic bailer is to set it halfway open on a downwind and then forget about it and just paddle. Basically I use bailers like a traditional scupper. The Vanquish however has a new style of bailer that requires active management. It is tensioned shut with a bungee and operated with a nudge of the the heel. It has only two positions - all the way open or all the way closed. The idea is that when a bailer is fully open it slows the boat down a lot (1 km/hr according to Oscar), so better to paddle with the bailer closed 99% of the time, and then occasionally open it to full to rapidly empty footwell. This works perfectly on the flat. Downwind, in practice, this means that there is water in the footwell 99% of the time, as water begins to accumulate as soon as the bailer is closed. This has taken a while for me to get used to. Initially it bothered me to have a 9kg ski with multiple kg of water lapping at my ankles, but I just kept reminding myself that an open bailer is much slower than carrying the extra water weight. I usually wait till I am on a good run and then kick the bailer open for about 5 seconds. I have gotten better at this, but I still don’t like being distracted by monitoring the water level and operating the bailer. It interrupts my attempts to achieve a zen-like flow state, and the act of kicking the bailer can create a momentary wobble. Nelo does make an extension that can be added to the bailer so that long legged paddlers don’t have to move their heel as far to operate the bailer. That might help, as a friend who has short legs, and therefore paddled my Vanquish with the foot plate much closer to the bailer, found operating the bailer effortless and intuitive.

Flat Water:
The Vanquish is fast on flat water. My aforementioned short-legged friend paddles a 560. He thinks the two boats are about the same speed on the flat. I think the Vanquish is a touch slower. But regardless, the Vanquish is fast, especially in sprint efforts. Under all out power the vanquish lifts up and resistance seems to disappear. I have sprinted this boat to 18 km/hr on the flat, which is faster than I have gone in any of my other skis or K1s. Stability is excellent on the flat. It rides wash intuitively. The bow does not catch floating leaves or sea weed.

Motorboat Wakes:
I spend a lot of time chasing motorboat wakes. The vanquish is very composed on the wake. In contrast to some other elite skis, there is zero instability when popping over the mound of whitewater just behind the motorboat to get inside the wake. Also in contrast to other elite skis, the vanquish is very at home riding outside the wake. The short length fits on steep wakes well, and because the boat turns so effortlessly, it is easy to change course and tuck back in behind the whitewater if needed.

Downwind:
Downwind is where the Vanquish gets weird, and also gets awesome! Nelo has made good on their promise of increased stability and maneuverability. The vanquish is sure-footed, nimble, and playful. While the 560 (according to my friend who paddles one) has a tendency to hold a line once underway, the Vanquish can seemingly turn in any direction at any point on the wave. At first the extreme maneuverability was a bit unnerving to me. In fact the hull was so unaffected by wave shape that it felt like I was floating along on a pillow of air, quite removed from the bumps below me. It reminded me of driving a car with overly light “numb” steering, and maybe doing so in the winter with a little bit of snow on the road. At times I would oversteer and the tail would whip around unexpectedly. This experience was unlike any ski I had been in before, and I was initially wondering if I had made a mistake in buying this ski. But after about three downwind runs I began to adjust to its strange dynamics, and since then I have really fallen in love with this ski.

Because the boat can turn so sharply and quickly, it creates more options on the wave. Moves that in a different ski would be out of reach, are possible in the Vanquish. I can see a move very late, and still have time to get the boat pointed the right way and just make it happen. This has allowed me to become a more creative paddler. I go through openings and onto waves that I normally wouldn’t, simply because I can do it and I am curious. Sometimes these whimsical choices work out well, and sometimes they dont. But when they don’t turn out well, the Vanquish is so nimble that it is very easy to steer out of a less-than-ideal situation. Basically the Vanquish encourages me to get into all sorts of strange situations, but it also almost always gets me out of all those situations with minimal loss of speed. This is very liberating. I see opportunities everywhere, and I just take them to see what will happen. I end up turning more than I do in other skis. I find myself side surfing way off to the left of my paddling partners, and then zip back, and then the next thing I know I have gotten myself way off to the right. And so on and so forth.

I used to own a current generation 550, and while it was a solid all around ski, and great on low angle waves, I found that on the steep limited-fetch waves I usually paddle, it was a bit of a trough-hog. It had a lot of tail volume and I never got very good at keeping that ski high on the wave. I was apprehensive that the Vanquish might be similar, with its increased tail volume, but that is not the case. The Vanquish is actually very easy to keep high on steep waves, either by leaning back, or, as I usually do in this boat, surfing diagonal. The bow on the Vanquish rarely gets buried in the wave ahead, and when it does, it is fortunately without much loss of speed. And when it is time to power forward onto the next wave, there is plenty of speed available.

In my experience the vanquish surfs wonderfully, but it does not surf smoothly. Maybe that is a result of the odd shape and sharp angles. It is not one of those skis that carves a long graceful arc when leaned it on edge. Its movements can be abrupt and jerky, and as mentioned before, it is low on boat feel. But it basically goes wherever I tell it to and executes all kinds of goofy ideas without protest. It surfs in a different way than the smooth surfing boats do, and I have really grown to like it.


Build Quality:
My vanquish is the ultra-light AIR layup. I have not weighed it, but it feels like the 9kg advertised weight is accurate. I have had a couple issues with my ski. The black kevlar seam tape was not adequately wetted out with resin and was leaky. I fixed that by painting the seam tape with epoxy while sucking on a tube that I had hooked up to the breather hole, to pull the resin deeper into the cloth. The SCS and WWR construction have hidden seams, so this would not be an issue on those heavier layups. The other gripe I have with my boat’s construction is that the coarse screws that hold the wave deflector and leash anchor onto the boat are simply drilled right through the carbon layup with no hardware or other backing on the inside of the boat. This is in contrast to the WWR layup 550 that I had previously. On that wider and heavier ski, the screws were threaded into metal anchors that were glassed into the inside of the boat. Perhaps not using anchors was a weight saving decision Nelo made with the AIR layup. At any rate the leash anchor point on my ski made me nervous, so I reinforced it with a plug of thickened epoxy and glass fiber inside the boat.

Overall:
The Vanquish is a boat that excites me every time I paddle it. It is making me a better paddler by allowing me to be more creative downwind. Its handling is not smooth, but it is agility and stability more than make up for that. It has brought new enthusiasm to my paddling. It is fast on the flat and in the bump. It does well with steep and with low angle waves. I have actually recorded my fastest downwind ever in the vanquish. I did have a couple of issues with the build of the AIR layup, but I was able to sort those out. Bottom line, if my Vanquish were stolen, I would order another.