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What's the fastest ski on the market?

Ask any six paddlers and you’ll likely get six different answers… And you can bet that the answer will likely be: “the ski that I own”!

A group of Cape paddlers got together on Sunday to try to answer the question objectively. This article describes the method used, the results and conclusions…

Early in 2005 an outspoken manufacturer told me, “90% of paddlers can’t cope with top-end skis and shouldn’t be on them.” He was referring to the then current crop of tippy high-end surf skis.

Then the Epic V10 burst onto the scene – and here was a fast, fun, top-end ski that could be handled by paddlers with less than perfect balance.  (Click here for our review.)

And last week a demo Fenn Mako 6 arrived in Cape Town. Reports from Durban and East London spoke of its speed and stability.

How would it compare with the other new skis? Would it be as stable; as fast; as comfortable? Could it be even better?

To my delight, I got hold of it last Saturday, and this review is the result…

The new Epic V10 Sport has arrived in South Africa… But wait, it’s just one copy, brought back from the factory by Oscar Chalupsky who has spent the last three weeks in China.

(I’m told that the factory is in full production – with a current capacity of 100 boats per month. The first batches of production skis are destined for the US to fulfil a huge backlog of orders.)

(By Rob Mousley) 

In my first conversation with Mark Lewin in 2003, he told me that I should be banned from paddling…

The 2003 Cape Point Challenge Qualifier was held in a fierce southeaster and I had joined the race at Millers Point to do a downwind run. On my own, I had counted on the race’s safety organisation to help me out if I got into trouble. As Mark later put it, how would I have felt if the rescue crews had had to leave a competitor to drown while rescuing me?

But he didn’t put it like that to begin with – he calls a spade a spade and his initial bluntness took me aback. It was quite an introduction to one of the most visible (at 6’10’’ tall) characters in South African Surfski.

• Length: 6.42m (21ft)
• Construction: glassfibre sandwich or composite carbon/glassfibre
• Weight (glassfibre, average): 15kg