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Saturday, May 27, 2000

Solo kayaks,
canoes continually
improving

The evolution of the solo
paddling craft has come a long
way, and innovations are
always on the horizon

By Linda Aragon
Special to the Star-Bulletin

The operator of the boat wins championships, but it doesn't hurt to have a good boat.

Paddlers this weekend will be using some of the fastest and most expensive equipment available to race from Molokai to Oahu.

About 90 solo canoe and kayak paddlers are entered in tomorrow's 32-mile Molokai Channel 2000.

"This is the premiere blue water kayak and canoe race," said race director Darryl Hara.

The open ocean course between the two islands can at times put paddlers in some of the roughest water international racing can offer. So in order to equip them with the right boat to handle the conditions and the competition, canoe and kayak builders have had to develop designs that are not only strong, but fast.

The world's elite kayakers will face off on several types of surf skis made locally.

The surf ski is an ocean kayak with an enclosed deck, meaning that the paddler sits on top of the boat rather than inside it.

Kailua builder Bob Twogood has developed a good reputation internationally with the Mako.

"This is the first boat that is faster than any other boat in flat water and in rough open ocean," Twogood said.

Twogood said the right combination of composites makes this boat agile enough to handle ocean swells and smooth enough to cut the water clean, which helps the boat's glide. This cuts out the need for paddlers to have two different boats.

Tomorrow, top kayakers Oscar Chalupsky of South Africa and Lewis Laughlin of Tahiti, will both be racing a Mako. The boat is built at Twogood's workshop in Kaneohe, but is more commonly seen in waters of other countries than here.

"We've hardly sold any locally," he said. "But recently at the Heineken Classic in Tahiti, out of the top seven racers, only one of them wasn't a Mako."

High performance surf skis range from about $1,600 for fiberglass boats to more than $2,000 for carbon fiber with epoxy vacuum bag seal. If these prices seem astronomical, well the sky is exactly the place where boat builders have looked for influence. The epoxy vacuum bag seal is the same process used in aerospace designs and on airplane parts. The process is about five times more expensive than using a polyester seal.

Billy Robello's newly designed Hydro Ski doesn't have a name yet, but he'll have at least a few hours to think about it as he crosses the channel tomorrow.

Several years ago while training for the Olympics at Lake Placid, Robello studied hydrodynamics. When he returned home, he combined what he learned racing Olympic kayaks with his boyhood knowledge of shaping and repairing surfboards to build surf skis.

"(Kayaker) Marshall Rosa gave me a broken Hayden to put together. I started thinking, 'I'm going to make skis instead of buy them,' " he said.

"The thing (Hydro Ski) surfs way quick. It has so much volume on the front. Downwind, it stays on a swell really long."

Tommy Conner's Sea Ski is still a popular kayak, which many people will be using tomorrow. Some kayakers say they prefer his boat because it's easier to ride.

"That's supposedly why people gravitate to it," Conner said. "It's comfortable and fairly stable, and just about as fast as everything else."

That comfort and stability might be an advantage in an endurance race like Molokai.

"Normally when you're in a race for three or four hours, your equilibrium tends to leave you," he said. "You want a boat that works with you rather than against you when you get tired."

After 15 years of making surf skis, Conner has ventured into the solo canoe business.

"The equipment is so much better. The canoes today are just as fast as the skis 10 years ago," he said. In the channel, Conner will be racing his latest boat, the Striker.

"It's fairly new. I've only had it out for a couple of months," he said.

At 21 feet, the carbon fiber boat is, "a little bit wide in the middle and a little bit shorter (in length)," Conner said. "It's more ski looking than canoe looking. It's maneuverable. It will point and shoot where you want to go. And in the channel, there are bumps going in eight different directions."

Solo-canoe racing continues to grow. This is the first time in the 24-year history of the solo Molokai race that canoe paddlers are equal to the number of kayakers.

Kayak makers like Conner and Twogood have responded by taking designs that give a kayak it's speed and surfing ability to develop a model for a canoe.

Canoes, thought to be bulkier and slower, would usually be the last place a kayak builder would look for inspiration. Unless your name is Karel Tresnak Sr. and your business, Outrigger Connection, has just come out with a really good solo canoe.

The Mantra, Tresnak's latest solo canoe, was the model for the kayak named the Matrix. The Matrix, 18.5 inches wide and 22 feet long, will be ridden by Kala Judd this weekend. The kayak is so new that it's hard to tell whether it will be as successful as the Mantra.

His son, Karel Tresnak Jr., has used the Mantra in several first-place finishes this season.

"The Mantra came out this year. It's just a good boat. It's well made," said the boat's maker, Brent Bixler. "It has eye-pleasing elements. For us local guys, it's professional."

For a race like Molokai which is about catching downwind swells, expect the Mantra to be in the front pack.

"The Mantra will probably have another year running, and then expect to see a change again," Bixler said. "Things are getting better at a fast pace.It's great, wondering what's around the next corner."

This week as John Martin celebrates making his 500th Naia canoe, he is looking ahead to a new design that he is working on. Even five years after its introduction, the Naia has retained a following. When kayak champ Kelly Fey switched to solo canoe racing this year, she did so with Martin's boat.

"It's a smaller volume boat, so women feel more comfortable," Martin said. "It's designed for the Molokai Channel. It surfs well. The lighter you are, you can have a lower volume boat."

If you're a big guy in need of more volume in big surf, Tiger Taylor has developed the Ono.

Taylor has also developed the Kolea, made with kevlar, for women and average size men.

The fastest paddler will win, but the maker of the winning craft is sure to feel like a winner too.