What is the longest kayak? When I began sprint racing (in 1966) my coach was a Hungarian immigrant who had been a champion paddler in his homeland. He said that the normal practice there was to put a superior paddler in the front of a double or four and have the newer paddlers learn by imitating his stroke from directly behind. In those days the Hungarians built their own boats and paddles, so they decided to go for the ultimate. They made an eight man sprint kayak. It had two rudders, one controlled by the bow paddler, the other by the second cockpit. He never told me how long it was, but it must have been huge. A modern k-4 is 11 meters long, so the eight would have been over fifty feet, I imagine. My coach said the first time the K-8 went out, they broke it in half trying to turn around a bridge on the Danube. Since we easily pulled a water skier on more than one occasion with a four, the eight could probably hit amazing speeds. Jim Tibensky *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Thu Jun 25 2009 - 04:45:50 PDT
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