V10 Sport Spotted in Durban - and Hong Kong
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.)
On his way home, Oscar stopped in Hong Kong, where he gave a paddling clinic to twenty or so keen paddlers and showed off the V10 Sport.
James Shortis, a Hong Kong resident was there. “It was great to hear some tips from the ‘master’” he said, “Mind you, this was after we took him out and showed him the ‘bright lights’ of Hong Kong! (I'll let him fill you in on those details)…”
At the end of the clinic,” he added, “we were standing around discussing the relative merits of the different boats and speculating on their performance.”
After some discussion they decided on an informal “trial” that consisted of James taking each of several skis and sprinting out and back over a 250m course on flat water in an effort to establish the top speed of each ski. Clearly this was by no means a definitive study, but the results were interesting:
| Ski | Max Speed (km/h) |
| V10 Sport | 15.6 |
| Icon | 15.8 |
| V10 | 16.6 |
| Mako XT | 15.2 |
James said that he’d wanted to take his Fenn Mako out as well, but he was “too buggered and the weather was coming in.” Pity!
Oscar is trying out the V10 Sport in the Durban surf this week but is threatening to bring it to Cape Town on the weekend of 8/9 April – if that happens we’ll have a full report plus lots more photos on the site. Stay tuned!