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Kayak and Canoe Design Bulletin Board
How long is too long?
Posted By: Tom Jarecki
Date: Thursday, 2 September 1999, at 4:16 p.m.
I'm looking at building a racing kayak for mainly flat water races where the paddling is one leg in a multi-sport adventure race. I wish to keep up with (or beat!) the guys and gals on surf skis, but I don't have $2400 (Canadian) to buy one for myself. The CLC Patuxent 19.5 looks like the simplest way to get a fast kayak but I was wondering about stretching it by about 1.5 feet to increase the waterline to about 20.5 feet, and also narrowing it to 19" (from 21). So far so good, no problems that I can see with this design-wise or structurally.
However, I got to thinking about horsepower and at what point does a waterline become so long that a recreational athlete (me - 5'-11", 180#, strong upper body) can no longer achieve hull speed over the course of a 3 hour race? Because if I can't achieve let's say 95% hull speed or more, then all I've done by stretching the boat is to increase the weight and wetted surface and to reduce efficiency. And as you can imagine, in a multi-sport race where I'm on the go for 15 or 20 hours, efficiency is very important.
And before anyone jumps on me by saying that I should forget hard chine stitch and glue and immediately gain 3% in speed (that number is from a commercial site) well yes, I do realize that. However, since this will be my first kayak and I'm just starting out in paddling as well I prefer the simple and fast building that Stitch and Glue represents. Once I've paddled it for a while then I'll have a better idea about what is important in my next boat.
Thanks for any ideas.
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Kayak and Canoe Design Bulletin Board is maintained by Nick Schade - Guillemot Kayaks with WebBBS 5.12.
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