Words: Corran Addison
My best work, as a designer and innovator, have invariably come during times of an unusual nature.
Corran Addison is a regular contributor to the Paddler magazine and owns Soul Waterman
The best time for those ‘Eureka’ moments…
You’d naturally think that creating magical kayak shapes, that have in some respects lead to a global rethink of how a kayak should be shaped, and used, would come about when I was most actively paddling. The natural, and I’d venture to say, seemingly correct conclusion, would be that when I’m paddling the most, out there every day testing, training and evolving as a paddler, that those ‘EUREKA’ moments would come as I was attempting some new manoeuvre or trying to visualize where to take paddling next, right in the thick of it.
But this assumption would be wrong
My best work, my most innovative and ground breaking work, has come about when I was relegated to a back seat position to my normal life. Or at least, when my focus was not set entirely upon freestyle or creek kayaking.
Take the Fury – the boat which unquestionably changed how all subsequent freestyle kayaks were designed, was such a radical departure from the accepted norm, that one competing designer exclaimed, “That’s not even a kayak anymore,” when he first saw it. Sure, execution left some things to be desired – cramped, squished feet, low twisted knees, a cockpit shape that leaked, and an overall paddling sensation with the overly wide ends and narrow center that made river running akin to paddling a door. But, where this boat shined, how it changed kayaking forever, was the planing hull, with anti trip rails, which opened up an entire new spectrum of freestyle moves that had never even been visualized.
Or had they?
Had they been visualized long before the design came to be?
In 1990, I made a colossal blunder in judgement. While the ensuing photo (left) has circled the globe 80 times, and become part of paddling folklore (the infamous batman suit waterfall run), arguably increasing my stock as a household name in our little sport, it also resulted in a broken back. It took me three months to recover enough to begin to walk again, and right after the accident we were not even sure that would happen.
As I lay, wallowing in self-pity, regretting what was now clear as a serious mistake, I had nothing else to do other than let my mind wonder.
And wonder it did.
South Africa
I began to think back to my days living in Durban, South Africa, and the days spent at the beach (playing truant from school) surfing, kayaking (in a Dancer), and boogie boarding. And it was the boogie boarding that got me thinking. While less dynamic than surfing in many ways, the fact that you were locked onto it (holding with hands) allowed you to spin like a top down the wave face, do barrel rolls, and off the lip tricks. In the mid 1980s this was almost unheard of on a surfboard, even if it’s commonplace today, and in a kayak like the Dancer, simply impossible.
What would it take, I thought, to make a kayak do what boogie boards were doing? Was it even possible to spin and flip like that? What would happen if you added the leverage of the seated position, and the reach of a paddle, to boogie boarding type surfing? And could you do this on a river wave? What would the kayak have to look like, not only to make it possible to do these things, but also to make it paddlable? I was of course aware of surf shoes (surf kayaks), and my father even had one at some point in the 1970s, but we’d taken this onto a river and it was horrible. Everything that made it function in the ocean made it terrible on a river wave, so I knew I had to rethink this entirely.
pure thought
Einstein developed the general theory of relativity almost entirely from his armchair. He simply sat and thought about it. Experimentation to prove his hypothesis came later. First he theorized with no more than pure thought. While my design breakthrough is paltry in comparison, the process was nonetheless similar. I lay there, and I thought. And thought. And thought. I did sketches (none of which survive unfortunately), and I held pencils and visualized spins, and flips as I twisted it from my hospital bed.
Lying in my bed, in 1990, I visualized the flat spin, the blunt and even the Airblunt. I’d done aerial barrel rolls on a boogie board, and so I twisted my pencil through the air in what is now known as the Air Screw. I tried to understand what I needed to do to a kayak design to make it do these things.
Some of the ideas I came up with we have since realized are not only unnecessary, but in fact inhibited the end goal. Having wider ends rather than the wide point in the centre, I surmised was necessary to generate the lift and support the hull as it spun on slower flat river waves. In fact this delayed the progression from the basic flat spin, which it did well, to the aerial things we do today. But the root design was correct; a flat hull, with raised edges, reduced volume ends, and overall shorter length were all spot on.
When I returned to work, I proposed the idea to my employer at Perception, but he thought I was nuts. Given contemporary design knowledge, he is vindicated in this initial appraisal of my idea, and it never went from theory to a testable prototype. It would be 1994 before I would actually begin to work on the design, at Savage Designs, and 1996 before it would see mass production. Freestyle kayaking changed forever from that moment on, and within 3-4 years, not a single round bottomed freestyle kayak was being made anywhere in the world. The Rubicon had been crossed.
Fury prototype
Short boats were not new. The first Fury prototype was extremely short (the production one was longer). Paddlers had been chopping up slalom boats for years to make little bee-bop ‘playboats’. In 1997 while at Riot kayaks I came up with the base design for the 007, and Pyranha did the Attak at about the same time (though this was a round bottomed boat targeted more towards micro creeking). There were others at about this time too of course. However, none of them really took off and became part of mainstream kayaking. The idea wasn’t bad, the designs themselves had just not quite hit that magic recipe on the head of the nail.
In early 1998, just months before we released the Glide, a boat that put Riot conclusively on the map, with its groundbreaking lines and wave surfing ability (the boat that changed the rules), I blew my knee snowboarding. Hobbled, unable to ride, nor kayak, I watched videos of myself in the Glide, and in the 007, and I began to piece together what I saw as the missing link: why were short kayaks not outperforming the longer ones when it came to freestyle kayaking? What were the specifics in the 007 design, and others on the market, that resulted in the ‘glide’ type designs of the world (8’ boats) being better performers?
While I was only relegated to arm chair theorizing for about 3-4 weeks this time around, it was enough. By the time we left on our annual pilgrimage West for the ‘rodeo’ tour, I already had the first Disco prototype sitting in the Riot R&D room. I left it there, wanting to focus that spring on selling the Glide, and we did. We sold 1,800 units in just six months and another 1,000 until of its ‘cheap’ spin off, the Showbiz. As soon as we returned to Montreal after the three-month action packed, whirlwind tour of the western seaboard, I grabbed the prototype Disco and rushed out to the Lachines waves to test it.
Mind blown.
Air blunts
A month later we attended Outdoor Retailer, and I had videos of me doing the first linked moves (air blunt into 1080 clean spins, all without a single stroke). Air blunts on command. The beginnings of air screws, flip turns, and a few moves that have been relegated to the archives such as Burning Man (ollie to a nose dive and mystery out of the wave by going under it), and by the fall, the first Pan Am.
Peoples minds were blown. It was the breakthrough that was needed in design to make short boats outperform longer ones. In fact it was such a surprise to all, that Dan Gavere, an animated event commentator, exclaimed at an event in the fall of 1998, “Wow, that little boat sure does work.” in a surprised tone of voice – to that point it was assumed that shorter boats were not as loose or performing as longer ones, because in reality, they weren’t.
Between Steve Fisher and myself, we won almost every event we entered in the boat in 1999. We were almost unbeatable. As a caveat, neither of us used it at the 1999 New Zealand worlds because the judges were unwilling to count most of the ‘new’ moves that the Disco could do, making it pointless to use, so at the last minute we both switched back to the Glide, taking second and third place respectively in a ‘long’ boat style neither of us had paddled in a year).
Immortalized in a magazine article that appeared soon after the New Zealand worlds, was a brief spat between a judge and myself that happened impromptu during an interview that was unrelated. I was told, “We won’t judge those air tricks you’re doing (in the Disco) because that’s not how you do a Blunt,” to which I retorted, “Don’t tell me how to do a Blunt. I invented the f***ing move.”
The story of my life. That made it two ‘Worlds’ in a row. The following worlds in Spain in 2001 would prove to repeat this cycle… I digress.
To the present
Three weeks ago, I blew my knee (yes, the same one) skateboarding with my son. My mind still thinks I’m 20, but my body has other ideas, and mid lay-out carve at the lip of the quarterpipe on my longboard, my knee cried “No more”, and my ACL let go. I tumbled down the wall and came to a rest, writhing in agony in front of a handful of teenages who then made matters worse by asking, “Hey Mister, are you OK? Aren’t you a bit old to be doing that?”
Days later we find ourselves in self imposed confinement as a global pandemic races through our countries, cities and communities. So for me the confinement is not as bad as it could have been, as I’m unable to walk without a cane. I can paddle, just enough, to float down a class 1+ rapid in front of my house with my Six-year old son, but the resulting injury from paddling sets me back days each time and I spend a restless, sleepless night as my knee sends electric shocks through my body every time I move under the covers.
So I lie awake all night, not daring to turn the light on should I wake my sleeping wife, and suffer her wrath. As I lie there, so my mind wonders, and invariably it darts and dodges its way though a myriad of sleep deprived, semi lucid thoughts until it lands squarely on kayaking.
We all have our favourite boats. Boats that were game changes for us each in our own way, given our state of mind, skill set, or personal focus at that time. Notable boats for me are the Dancer, the Rotobat, Hurricane, Scorpion, Glide and Disco. Each in its own way, for a special time in my paddling career, was a personal favourite; unforgettable memories etched forever in the fibre of my mind and soul.
Today that boat is the 303. It’s all I want to paddle. It invokes memories of the Scorpion, the Glide, and my days as a slalom paddler, stitched in concord with where I am today as a paddler; on the downslope of past greatness, focused more on paddling with family than pushing my skills (or fears), and when I do go out to push myself, it’s about a fluid, smooth, choreographed dance with the river. The 303 does this for me in ways no other kayak can, or indeed, over the years, has. I have 13 models to choose from in my current lineup, and I paddle the 303 more than all the others combined.
Paddling the Moose with longtime friend Dan Gavere last fall, I began to think about current design trends, creek boats, playboats, river runners, and the new breed of ‘half slice’ designs out there, and what they all bring to the table. Each has its place, arguably on the same river, used by different people. I had the same thought on the Upper Gauley just months before, as I sat on the rock at Pillow, and watched every sort of craft and paddler, through the entire spectrum of age and skills come though the rapid. Some with much style, some decidedly lacking thereof. And as we jeered, hollered and encouraged one paddler after another, so I began to wonder about a boat design that would be better at combining all these aspects into one.
The proverbial ‘Jack-of-all-trades’.
Ah, snowfall. Kayaking is washed from my mind, I strap on boots and a board, and off I go riding. Paddling is the furthest thing from my mind as I seek out powder lines, work on new board designs, and appreciate my favourite boards on my favourite runs. My “Jack of all” is forgotten as I slice and dice this new frozen white water, delighting in winter.
And Quebec has lots of winter.
Suddenly, just like that, the snow is gone. It’s the beginning of March, and a hot week followed by a week of thundering rain, melts everything in a week that’s not a groomed run. Then it gets really cold, and the snow that’s left freezes to boiler-plate ice. A week later, the ski areas shut down as Covid-19 runs rampage through Quebec. Between the sequential events of ice pack, and the ski area shutting down, I blow my knee. It’s no great loss to me, the shut down: I can’t ride anyway.
squarely focused
So I lie in bed, every other night, wide awake, trying not to wake anyone else, and my brain is squarely focused on that long gone idea, a mind expanding, do it all design, that will truly do it all (of course within reason).
As with the Fury, or the Disco, aspects of what I have in mind have been done before, enjoying a smaller or larger success. For the 007, that preceded the Disco as a short planing hull design, while it worked, was liked, and sold well, it was not the game-changer the Disco would be: the small details, the ‘revolutionary ideas’ that would take the basic concept of ‘short’ and ‘planing’ from an interesting, fun little boat, to an industry changer were not quite there in that needed winning combination.
This is how I feel about the do it all boats available now, mine included. Most of them are great boats, but they will not be remembered as industry game changers.
So what’s missing, my mind muses. What is that magic combination of ideas, combined with something new possibly, that lacks to take this oft visited concept, and make it truly special?
I am now at V14
encil and paper have been replaced with CAD software, and flow analysis software (limited in scope, but still useful). I wake each morning, and begin to take the ideas of the previous night, and rework my design from the day before. Each days work renamed V1, V2, V3 etc. I am now at V14, as this design evolves, and each night I sleep less and less as I become more excited about the possibility of what I might uncover here.
You never really know until you paddle it, but like Einstein (in a much reduced capacity), sitting on his couch, envisioning his general theory of relativity, testing his hypothesis with little more than pure thought in his mind, so I am gradually putting together the key components of what I believe, may just, change how we approach the design quandary of seemingly opposing design requirements to create a Jack-of-all-trades design for most river conditions, for most people.
There never are any guarantees, and as the hopelessly failed Saiko project at Riot showed; sometimes your best intended ideas are a total failure. I truly feel like I might be onto something here, and, I dare say, it’s about time to make a physical prototype, and go and test it.
That is, as soon as the authorities let us out.
