By Corran Addison
Corran Addison is a regular contributor to the Paddler magazine and owns Soul Waterman
Necessity is the Mother of all invention
Kayaking has been my life since as far back as I can remember. My father, having seen Deliverance, decided he and his friends at university wanted to learn to kayak. So they built themselves kayaks in the university basement, learning as they went and reading whatever books they could find at the time.
No sooner had they returned from their first trip that I knew I wanted to be a part of it. From those early days until now, almost 50 years later, kayaking has been the single most important driving force in my life. It’s taken me to the Olympics, multiple world championship medals, countless first descents and records, to expeditions all over the world, and most importantly, has formed lifelong friendships and relationships with some truly magnificent people.
When my son was born, I knew that I would want to introduce him to kayaking to have the opportunity to experience the life I have lived. Although somewhat selfish in goal, this has been about creating memories for me with my son as it will hopefully be fond memories for him.
I have written and talked about this journey at length. However, over the last five years, my eagerness to get him into the best possible equipment to make the learning experience as accessible, easy, fun, rewarding and safe as possible has led to developing a line of kids kayaks and equipment within my company Soul Waterman. That line is so successful that the ‘kids division’ is our leading one. As his skill set has improved, and he’s starting to really run rivers that are exciting for my wife and I, a new challenge has emerged, one that frankly I never saw coming.
Range of skill sets
Like many families, there is a range of skill sets within our nucleus. I’m an expert. My wife Christine is at best a lower intermediate kayaker (but an above-average surfer and paddleboarder, so very at ease in water). My son, who is essentially a beginner in the grand scheme of things, is on a steep skyward learning curve, improving rapidly each time we go out.
As such, we’re beginning to run more challenging rivers (class 3) and are encountering new challenges. The first is that we are rapidly approaching the maximum skill set of Christine and her ability to follow, and as importantly, be part of the safety team that surrounds my son as he progresses. Unfortunately, due to a series of concussions (snowboarding, racing motorcycles and a few others), she cannot be inverted, so rolling is out of the question. It’s not that she would not be able to roll if she knew how, but that her condition does not allow for the process of learning the skill.
So she will always be limited by what she can run without flipping. As such, she requires a forgiving, easy kayak to paddle that allows her to go where we go and to play in the same places we play. In addition, she likes surfing waves, so she needs all the attributes of a good wave surfer and needs something supremely forgiving for the rapids themselves. In turn, I can concentrate on being there for Kailix and his friends and not have to be concerned with her safety too.
She has tried a whole host of my boats, and others from other manufacturers, and in the end, has settled for the Disco as the ‘best of all worlds’ for her needs: short enough to fit into the smaller sized waves we’re encountering, loose planning hull so it’s fun to surf, forgiving in the rapids without having a grabby tail, small and light enough for her to carry to and from the water (one of the side effects of her concussion is a limited ability to stoop and lift heavy things). It’s not perfect, but it’s the best compromise so far.
Shorter kayaks
I, on the other hand, have encountered an entirely different set of challenges. I, too, want to have fun and play on the rivers we’re running. Still, I need to have a boat that’s short enough to fit into small eddies with multiple kids and be able to turn around and manoeuvre in close quarters as I adjust life jackets, point out lines, and deal with the constant little things that come up when you’re paddling with multiple young children. So I’ve abandoned my longer, more fun boats in these family outings for much shorter ones that allow me to accomplish this easily.
For me too, thus, the Disco seemed at first to be the best boat. I can do circles all day long in a cluttered eddy, surf waves, and have enough volume to pull a kid out of the water onto my bow when necessary.
However, at 6’6”, it’s slow to paddle. If I need a sudden burst of speed to rush 20-30 metres to collect a floundering kid or redirect one to avoid a situation, it takes me too long to get there. I found the 7’6” F-Bomb was a better option; long enough to get a quick sprint in, short enough to move about in eddies (but a little long for this), and of course, fun on waves. However, the ‘full slice’ nature of the boat means that the nose loads up when racing through wave trains, and the low volume nose (and tail) make rescue more complicated. It’s not ideal, no matter how fun it is.
So I pulled my old 6’10” Main Squeeze out. It seemed like it would be the perfect compromise for me. Faster to paddle than the Disco, fit better into the cluttered eddies than the F-Bomb, and little more volume in both ends for rescue. It’s not bad, really, and it’s what I’ve been using all year.
Like my wife’s choice of the Disco, the Main Squeeze is not perfect. I want a little more paddling speed, a little dryer bow to race through chop, a little more nose and tail volume to pull kids onto, and more rocker, so it’s just easier to handle in general in the chaos that’s the reality of paddling with multiple children: it’s a lot like herding cats.
Likewise, Christine would like a little more speed, just for less effort in paddling, and so it’s easier to catch and surf longer, flatter waves.
She needs volume for forgiveness in the chaos that is whitewater, but not as much as even small creeks, as that tail volume tends to push the ends sideways when trying to surf. A tail that can ‘sink into’ the wave is easier to surf than one with loads of volume, but it can’t be ‘squirtable’ as this is too grabby for her skill set. And of course, a planing hull that’s forgiving for surfing is a must.
Safety boater
Amazingly we have realized that we both want the same boat for entirely different reasons. In her case, the skill disparity between herself and me (and rapidly approaching that of Kailix), and for me the ability to be the safety boater and ‘sheepdog’ in the group and still have fun.
If you’d asked me two years ago, or even a year ago (as I’ve been designing and developing equipment for kids so families can go out and paddle together), whether part of this ‘family equipment’ would also include a boat for the parents themselves, I’d probably have scoffed at it, “There are plenty of good boats out there”, I’d most likely have said. “You don’t need a specific boat for teaching kids or for the parents.”
Or something like that.
It wasn’t even on my radar. But I’ve come around on this. It has occurred to me that just like I have a ‘big wave surfer’ (303) and a ‘steep creeker’ (Chaos Monkey), a ‘hole rider’ (F-Bomb) and a ‘casual paddler’ (Dancer) so that I can maximize my potential and fun on any given day of paddling depending on what I’m going to do, so I also need a ‘family day’ boat for the same reason.
A ‘family boat’?
Who would have thought there would be such a thing. But then again, you could say that about pretty much any purpose specific kayak if you go back far enough in the history of our sport. It was only 30 years ago that kayakers owned one kayak and used it for everything.
So I find myself once again exploring a world of possibilities as I try to create just such a boat. I talk with Christine about what she wants. I talk with other families where one of the parents has a lower skill level than the other. I talk to the ‘primary paddler’ in the families we are enjoying the river days with, and the more we discuss it, the more we realize that just such a boat is needed and also that the challenges being encountered by Christine and I are more or less universal with other families.
The point of this story is not to promote a new kayak design (though I won’t complain if it does), but rather to draw attention to how, after 50 years of paddling, I’m still encountering situations of, “I never thought we’d need a boat for that”. Or in finding myself being challenged by the multitude of sometimes conflicting performance characteristics to achieve concord between them.
I remember encountering these same challenges in developing the original Disco back in 1998 and the Booster in 2002 (all designs have them, but these were particularly challenging). The Disco brought about an entire playboating revolution, and the Booster had unprecedented success as both a beginner boat (and was used by schools worldwide) and as a boat that even experts gravitated to as their exciting everyday boat (this is long before “half slices”). Mastering these complicated design challenges usually results in groundbreaking designs.
The question, of course, remains, for me as a parent, will this new challenge result in taking my father-son experience to new levels? I certainly hope so! And of course, my wife is reading this over my shoulder as I type; no pressure.
