surfski

East London, South Africa: Angus Warren watched helplessly as the shark’s teeth crunched through the hull of his surfski. “It seemed to go on and on,” he says, “pushing and chomping. I was thinking, why is it not working out that it isn’t food?

“I can’t tell how long it took, but I had enough time to shout a couple of times to the others.”

The next thing he knew, he was in the water…

I finally got my hands on a demo Fennix Swordfish S this weekend and did two Miller's Runs in succession to see if I could feel any difference in handling between the 2018 Swordfish S and the new Fennix model.  Conditions were challenging: False Bay was covered in whitecaps, whipped by a combination of a 25-30kt southeaster and small, confused seas.  The result?  I definitely want to spend more time in this boat.

The shark smashed like a freight train into Roger Swinney’s surfski in an explosion of noise and spray, knocking him off into the water.  “I managed to get back on the ski,” he said, “but I fell off again and as I remounted the second time, I saw the swirl and tips of the shark’s fins.

“I didn’t see it clearly, but from the force of it and the movement in the water, it looked big!”

Yeeeeeha! A couple of strokes and the ski started accelerating, 16kph, 20kph, 26kph… Whooomph! The spray deflector threw a mass of water arcing into air… Blinded, unbalanced, keep it going, paddle, paddle…!

My opposition surged past me on the last lap of the Seadog race in Fish Hoek. In desperation, I steered to hook onto his side wash… To my surprise the XT S accelerated instantly, and I sat there with little effort riding the wash for the rest of the leg.

[Editor: Knysna Racing Kayaks released the Lee McGregor-designed Classic and Rhythm surfskis in 2017.  Contributor and passionate surfski paddler Erik Borgnes has been paddling both them; here's what he thinks of these "short" boats...]

Could an Outrigger Canoe manufacturer bring radical innovation to the surfski market? One of our forum readers noticed a short blog on the Kaiwa’a website announcing the surfski project. I emailed Kai Bartlett to find out more…

As I shot down the face of the run, spray flying, I spotted the next dip in the water over to one side. A touch of the rudder pedal, a slight lean and the surfski turned towards it; through the dip and a neat curve in the other direction and I'd shot around the shoulder of the wave, accelerating again onto the next run. A crazy thought ricocheted around my brain: What was it that produced this feeling of extreme pleasure? Adrenalin? Endorphins? Dopamine? All three? Whatever it was, the feeling of playing with a new boat definitely added to it.

Here are some basic facts that’ll help you to visualise what’s going down on Saturday and Sunday in Hong Kong, when the women’s and men’s ICF Ocean Racing World Championships take place.

A frequent question on the surfski.info forum is:  "I'm going on holiday to x country, where can I hire a surfski?!"  Jonas Hollander from Sweden had a brilliant idea a few days ago...  Create a google map with the locations of every place you can buy, hire or borrow a surfski - around the world.  At the time of writing, the map has over 90 locations and the number is growing every day.