Re: [Paddlewise] Innovations in sea kayak designs

On Fri, Apr 10, 2009 at 10:42 AM, Darryl Johnson <
Darryl.Johnson_at_sympatico.ca> wrote:

> Perhaps I am more dense than usual today, but I seem to be missing the
> point. On the one hand, you speak of a lack of design variation; on the
> other you speak of custom-sized boats.
>
> Is this not apples and oranges?


I thought I said "innovation" rather than variation. There has been a fair
bit of variation. Not a whole lot of innovation. The Illusion's advance is
in customization of fit and the design of a boat that makes it relatively
easy to manufacture it in custom sizes. This is not as easy as it sounds.
I'm hopeful that more customization will follow. It's much easier to do
multiple sizes in plastic boats once the tooling is made; just spit 'em out
and weld 'em together. Composite boats are more complicated and take a lot
more work.

>
> The fact that a boat is available in a multitude of sizes does not, it
> seems to me, make it a "new" or different design.


Well, the idea of making a performance range variable across an multitude of
sizes is, at least, innovative.


> But there seems to be a fairly limited range of variables involved in
> building a kayak, so that they will tend to resemble each other. And, it
> seems to me, there is a certain inertia in the marketplace that almost
> dictates that a kayak must look like other kayaks to gain any foothold in
> the market.


You might have thought so 15 years ago when thinking about white water
kayaks. But a modern w/w playboat really doesn't resemble a 1994 river
runner very much. There was, of course, an evolution in the designs from the
old pointy-at-both-ends river boats through the Perception Pirouette to the
latest 6-foot long flat-bottomed playboat. But the product of 1975 and the
product of 2009 look far different from each other. So I'm not altogether
certain that making all kayaks look one way or another is all that important
except, perhaps, from a marketing standpoint.

As an example, there were some reviews of a kayak in the past year or two
> (my memory isn't what I'd like it to be) which has sides that curved inward
> in the middle of the boat. This, to me, was a new variation in boat design,
> but it seems to have disappeared from view. I have seen nor heard nothing in
> many months about this design. Perhaps it was an ill-conceived design from
> the performance point of view and has justly been tried and sentenced. Until
> I read otherwise though, I will  hold my suspicion that people didn't buy it
> because it looked *too* different.


I think that it was not enough of an advance in performance and too radical
an advance in "looks". But I never got to see one in real life let alone
paddle one.


> An interesting topic. I'm looking forward to reading other comments on it.
>
> Yup. :)


Craig Jungers
Moses Lake, WA
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