Fastest ski on flat water?

This is an enquiry from:
ChrisQuirk <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>

My question is " I paddle a Fenn Millenium and am thinking of a new ski. Allowing for differences in ability, stability etc, on smooth water what is fastest, Fenn Elite, Epic V10L or still the Millenium??

Red 7 Pro 70!

We need to get a world class sprint/marathon paddler to do 500m time trials with all boats - obviously of similar weight and with good rest in between runs so as to keep it as scientific as possible. BUT I find the Red 7 seriously quick...

I think it is the extremely flat rocker, narrow front deck and the narrow waterline that does it.

On a different note but still dealing with speed, what is the benefit of a cut off tail like the honcho extreme, epic v10 and new custom kayaks boats?I have seen the Volvo Ocean Race boats have this but is the effect still worthwhile on such a small scale as on a ski?

Also, I know that a longer boat is supposed to be faster (like the Pro 70), but I read somewhere that the benefit of going longer only REALLY applies to boats with a width to length ration of greater than 1 to 6 or something i.e. boats with a wider hull relative to length like a yacht etc?

Any budding hydrodanamicists (big word) out there?

scientific test to follow, but I would rate the "bad boy" Icon as faster than the Millenium on the flat and faster than any of the skis mentioned above. The only one that may come close is the new Fenn Elite but I have not paddled that on the flat so I can't give a good opinion.

Watch this space for a back to back flat water performance test between:

Icon
Synergy
V10
V10L
V10S
Mentor
XT
Mark 1
Itap K1
Legend K1

Stuart

The Icon is a quick ski - potentially the fastest on flat. But...even coming from a Nelo sprint K1 with a very high seat that I used for racing in choppy water, wind etc, I still found the Icon very unstable...very very unstable.

yep I agree about the ICON...........it was my 1st ski, I found my speed on flat water super quick, but as soon as it got a little cross chop I found myself doing the old swim-remount-brace far too often!

Amazing the difference in the new skis on the market now, V10 is sooooooo stable compared to the ICON.

I have watched sailing boat designers explore the shape of the stern. Many trade offs and variations to suit the method of propulsion ie. sail and or motor - both inboard and outboard.
One interesting concept was the 'wave effect'. Concept being that by cutting off the stern, water still continues in an arc and the void left by cutting and shaping the boat's stern creates thrust against the stern. Haven't seen kayak designers go there yet.

Regarding the cut-off transoms, and not withstanding that they may have been designed for performance reasons, I heard at the time that on some (epecially earlier) ski's at least part of the reason for a cut-off transom was the fact that ski's are exported most often in ... 6 meter shipping containers, and with ski's hovering at around the 6 meter mark, every centimeter counted...

Keen to hear if anyone else heard this story, but it both makes sense and was widely known.

Later ski's mostly seem to be 6.3m, 6.4m, etc.

Cheers

I am not sure that I buy the argument that a cut off transom generates a wave that propels the boat. The situation needs to be considered as a closed system and, while the wave may propel the boat, the boat has to create the wave i.e. the energy received by the boat has to be imparted to the water by the boat so even ignoring the energy lost its a zero sum game.

The benefit of a cut off transom in a ski it that it allows a slower narrowing of the hull towards the rear. While the cut off tail may not be quite as efficient the loss is so small that it represents a good trade off against the improved efficiency of the hull.

As to which ski is faster on flat water bear in mind that the difference btween the top skis is most probably of the order of 2-3%. It is highly unlikely that anybody could feel such a small diffrence. Having owned both a 16kg standard V10 and 8.5kg Elite I can tell you that the lighter ski feels dramatically faster but we know from race results that the difference is small. What confuses the paddler is that the light weight ski accelerates a lot easier. This reduced effort at the get go is very easily experienced as being due to the ski being "faster".