Ripped and Cut

More from the early days when boats carved. This time slowed down

Early Days of flat Hulls

This is some early footage from the Rip and Jive era. I love this footage as you can really see the edges of the hulls carving and pushing a lot of water around. This is something modern play boats don't do as well. The white boat in the movie is a Groovy surf boat which was super fun out there. Skookumchuck and surfing on the ocean were my inspiration to do the flat hulls. We just got to use the waters energy to get speed. Next we gotta start doing that for touring, ocean swells have a lot of energy. The other guys in the movie are my good friends Mike Druce who made the movie and is now Head Slalom Coach in Australia and Keith Klapstein who can paddle anything any time whether it is class five , surf, national slalom team, canoe trips oh yes he also paddled 900 miles around the Queen Charlotte Islands.

Gotta Vote

Ok people, We gotta solve the age old question Rudder or Skeg. Do I design my next boat with a rudder or skeg? I want to know what you think. This could be the definitive survey so lets vote. This is a kayak democracy.

Surfing in the Chatham 16

The 16 is a fun boat to surf. Did this many times over so much fun and gotta lot of water up the nose.

17 ft'er Prototype 2

The new 17 ft'er has been moving along. Here are a few pictures of the model I will post more on the changes we made in the next few days. The lastest changes have made the boat really interesting we've been trying to keep the great glide of the first proto and get a better lean turn which seems to be working.

Nootka's in Antarctica

Here are a few photos from Jon Bowermasters trip in Antarctica. He used Nootka tandems from Necky. You can check out many of his kayak trips on the link below. We did this boat over ten years ago but it still seems to work well for serious trips. It has a great compromise of speed, capacity and stability. It also works great on family weekend trips with kids and way more gear than you really need. Which is how I seem to use it mostly these days.



http://www.jonbowermaster.com/oceans8/index.html