EOI - intermediate ski shootout

A couple of months back a couple of us West Australians discussed doing some ski comparisons to update some of the older ones getting around.

It seems the intermediate ski's are all the rage at present and the lines between beginner/novice ski have been blurred by the arrival of the V8, Oscar and think's new ski (cant remember name just now) where previously a V10sport and XT would have been considered beginner ski's. So I reckon we assemble the following group of ski's for our first hit out, some of them on the border of novice/intermediate to show how they compare.

Fenn Swordfish
Carbonology Vault
Think Evo II
Think Legend
Epic V10sport
Fenn XT

I am aware of other skis such as

Carbonology Zest
Stellar SR

But unless we have keen testers who own one we may not get access to them.

So what do people think? Is this a good first list to have a go at?

Do you have one of these ski's and want to be a part of the testing?

The basic idea will be for all testers to paddle all ski's over a set course with some other measures put in place to reduce variables.

Plan to spend a morning at our state rowing course on the flat, and another session on the ocean. Probably late Jan early Feb depending on people's availability. No need to be a great paddler, in fact a spread of paddlers would be good for a more rounded Assesment.

I will also post on our local paddling forum (ratherbepaddling) to assemble a group of testers

Feel free to give Adam a shout to arrange any of the Think skis for the test.

Stew wrote: Feel free to give Adam a shout to arrange any of the Think skis for the test.

Cheers Stew, I know a very excited paddler waiting for his Evo II to arrive will probably take part, will see if a legend paddler surfaces.

Might call on Adam if/when we go on to do an elite level ski day.

Can we do a full-on article out of this? I'm happy to put the text together if you can give me the facts and photos...
Cheers
rob

robin.mousley wrote: Can we do a full-on article out of this? I'm happy to put the text together if you can give me the facts and photos...
Cheers
rob

Most certainly!

Great idea, I'd also add the Stellar SES, SEL and SE to the list. From what I've seen North of the River in Perth these would be the most popular ski used by intermediate paddlers so shouldn't be too hard to get a hold of.

I'd be happy to participate with my SES .

Hi

The recently released 'FOCUS' designed by Mark Lewin and built by his Custom Kayak team has to be on the list. It's a contender.

Cheers
David Gwynn

Please include the redesigned 2011 Huki S1-R

Thanks for the suggestions guys.

Please remember that some ski's may not be available to our market so we will take what we can get.

The Stellar SR is the only one of the Stellars I see fitting in this category, the others (SE, SEL & SES would probably be more suited to the Elite level group which if we can get this one off the ground we will have a crack at shortly after.

Perhaps as Think has done there is a rep or two willing to make ski's available.

Ok if you are serious about a shoot out and you want to add some science into it then here is what you need to do
1. Get a small tinny with a 10hp motor, ideally use a rowing tender as they have little or no wake
2. Get a load cell which can be attached to a ski rope
3. Find a nice flat stretch of river
4. Weigh each of the paddlers, ideally get a spread of 65 to 100 kg as this is the range of Paddlers these SMS are designed for. I'm 135kg
5. Tow the ski with paddler over the course increasing the speed in 1 kmh increments. Use a gps. You can then graph the weight (drag) required to move the ski through the water for each speed and each paddlers weight.

This will then let you know which ski is best suited to which weight of paddler in each band of speed . You can do the primary abd secondary stability by calculating the righting moment for each kayak but this will be a little but harder to work out but still possible

I meant to add, from these "drag" tests we can easily calculate the amount of power you need to generate to paddle at a given speed for a given ski and given paddlers weigh.
I hope this helps
Regards
David

Ok, so anybody got a good cheap waterproof load cell calibrated to work in the expected range(oxymoron), some way of hooking it up to a ski without putting any upward or downward pressure on the boat; hell just hooking it up to most would be a mission, good software to analyze it all, enough time to perform multiple runs in multiple boats with regular control runs, a GPS with enough precision to do this, a boat with a good motor control and a driver that can keep straight, a way of ensuring the rudders are all locked straight, a way of keeping the fore/aft balance correct with the dummy weight or enough volunteers of different weights that can balance upright to the same degree every run, no wind for an extended time on some flat water..................................................................................... test gear to see how much each ski yaws under typical paddling strokes and loads........the effect of the yaw on drag.............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................throw in some testing with differing body proportions/weight distributions, some runs in controlled lumpy water, drag tests with differing rudders as well as tests to see how they perform with a full bucket........................................................................................................................................................................................................bucket drainage at several test speeds with varying weight paddlers............................................................................................max speed for all the boats with different paddlers, flat water into a small chop...............................................................................................................................................easy as piiissss.



Arh fruck it, just get a bunch of guys you regularly paddle with and go for a few paddles with maybe some top speed sprints and perceptions on stability and control.

Gotta say I agree with RAB.

Drag is only one small component of how a boat goes - it says next to nothing of the boat's behaviour in waves, the stability, the comfort of the seat, etc, etc.

I'd keep it really simple. We did sprint tests over a short distance, swapped the paddlers and boats around and drew objective (timing) and subjective (rate the tippiness on a scale of 1 to 5) conclusions. Even though the tests were simplistic, it gave IMHO a pretty accurate comparison.

Hi Robin , have you got the information on the test conducted. I have checked some other sites and was surprised they rated an Fenn elite only a 2 for
stability and similar for remounting .

With the tippiness scales do you include remounting or is that a seperate catergory ?

THXS

After coming out yesterday in some pretty big stuff, I'd say ease of remount is pretty important.

On that note, that's 3 times now over my paddling career that I have been dropped from the boat because my paddle spun when I was trying to body english the ski to do what I needed.

It's not something I usually check before paddling, but will be now.
So from now on, I'll always check the lock to see if the blades can spin.
You can put surprising twisting loads on it sometimes.

Hey boss, the description of what we did is here:

Surfsk.info's surfski shootout 2006

As I said, we kept it about as simple as it could be. In spite of that it took a huge amount of organisation to get the people and boats together and to do the tests.

And in spite of it being so simplistic, most people agreed with our conclusions so it seemed, accepting the limitations, that there was benefit to be gained from the exercise.

Our tippiness measure was purely subjective and did not include remounting. A remount test would be good, but again would necessarily have to be simplistic. It's very difficult to simulate, for example, the fact that I personally find it much easier to remount in wind (and waves) than on the flat or small chop. The reason for this is that a strong wind actually provides a measure of stability to the situation in that it's pushing from one side.

Cheers

Now that we have recovered from the Duel and Doctor I am looking for Perth paddlers to get involved in the shootout.

Head over to ratherbepaddling.com.au to express your interest.

Thanks

Did you much interest in helping with the shoot out?

A few peple put thier hands up, but we need a good 10 or do to make it work properly, then dates were hard to set with lots of races at the moment, so we are waiting for the winter when racing stops and there may be some more interest.