DURBAN WINTER SERIES – RACE 4 – KING OF THE BAY
I always find this race a hard one. The very flat water inside the Harbour tends to suck on a surfski. Although it is only 22km it certainly often feels longer. Because there is a lot of wave riding bunches form very quickly. The front paddlers set such a fast pace, looking for the fastest possible wave, that it fools many of the intermediate paddlers into going way too hard in the beginning. There is a lot of fighting for position and it is easy to get boxed in. I forsake the fastest waves and get off to the side a bit and work along the field until I find a pace that I can manage. At about 1km from the start I was out of the top 25, but once I found the rhythm I could cope with, at about 4km I had got into a fast moving bunch of 4 paddlers and had moved up to 10th place. I was looking forward to the 12km outside the harbour. Exiting the harbour, we were met with a beautiful flat calm sea, but regrettably nothing at all for a surfski paddler to get excited about. It became a real slog.
I got out sprinted late in the race by two of the younger guy’s, pushing me back into 12th spot overall and a healthy win in the masters division. All in all, a great race. Well organized. Race 4 under the belt. Looking forward to race 5 along the Durban beachfront. I hope we have some surf to bite into.
SPECIALIZED DOUBLE SKI’S - On the back of the success of our single K1 the LEGEND and LEGEND XL in Australia at the Avon Descent and in other International events, I got commissioned to make a few specialized “Avon River” APEX double surfski’s. We have made these before, but not to the specification that we were asked to make these.
The construction was completely out of Kevlar, using a vinylester resin in a hand lay up.
The drainage system is unique and takes the form of a flexible clear PVC hose draining each cockpit back wards from the foot well, past both seats, and exiting the hull behind the cockpit about 40cm behind the back paddler. The angle of the pipe leaving the foot well and exiting the ski further back makes the drainage very efficient, and less prone to damage on rocks etc. These are glassed into position inside the ski first over a length of about 12cm onto both the deck and the hull. On the outside we have created a reservoir to allow us to seal both points with a flexible silicone sealer. (see pictures 1 & 2)
The deck mold has been modified to accommodate the cabling and an over stern rudder. Two additional inspection hatches have been placed immediately over the drainage exiting point, and can also be used to empty the ski quickly should the ski be damaged and take water. (See pictures 3 & 4)
I was curious as to the ability of the system to drain efficiently because we had never constructed this system before. I was making it to a recommended spec, and made a few of our own changes. My colleague Mark Mulder and I tested one of the ski’s on some flat water. We purposely filled up both cockpits with water to the brim, (a full bucket of water in each cockpit), and it drained clear in 150m of paddling. I was very happy with the result.
See you on the water
MARK
