"The Pinguino was one of the best wave performers of the surf sessions. 'The secondary chine makes it easy to hit the brakes and go back, not so much in the trough, but as you’re coming up off the wave, the ends release and you can carve it on edge back and forth,' said one tester, noting the lightweight nature also seriously reduced any drag in the water. Lockwood chalks up that agility and acceleration to the boat’s multi-chine hull profile, enabling it to perform like a hard-chine boat." (Canoe & Kayak: Skook Review II, a review of kayak performances at Skookumchuk rapids: click here to see the review on Canoe & Kayak).
The boats shown above are shorter and more manueverable. Some people do enjoy surfing longer kayaks. Warren Williamson (shown surfing above), had this to say after surfing in our kayaks at Skookumchuck Narrows:
"The Pinguino is very user friendly on the wave. It's definitely a surf kayak... Once the wave got bigger it really liked it. If you want more of a sporty surfing kayak, the Pinguino is an incredible kayak."
In regards to surfing the longer, Murrelet 4PD, he concluded, "I found it quite different than any other kayak I've paddled. When you are about to get kicked off the wave and you're trying to power on, the Murrelet just takes off like a rocket and catches the wave. I loved it. So many times you just work, work, work and away you go (off the wave), but with the Murrelet you're right back in there... The Murrelet is a very good all around kayak: a rolling kayak, you could race in it, you could camp in it, you can surf in it. It's an incredible kayak."
KAYAK KIT Includes: Precision pre-cut BS-1088 Okoume plywood panels(4mm), cockpit coamings, System Three epoxy, measuring pumps, 38" wide fiberglass cloth (6 oz., specially treated for use with epoxy resin) for inside and outside of hull, 1.5" fiberglass tape, wire, squeegee, dental syringes, vinyl gloves, wood flour, stirring sticks, steel push pins, 2-part slung-back rest with a Therm-a-Rest seat pad, Keepers adjustable footbraces, pre-cut temporary frames to aid and ease construction, fully illustrated construction manual.
*The transverse Metacenter, in inches, is a measure of a kayak's initial stability. A higher number is more stable. All single kayaks computed with same weight person.
**Efficient cruising is a function of low frictional drag and low wetted surface (WS). Lower WS means a faster (less effort) cruising speed, here expressed in sq. ft. For example, the shorter Arctic Tern 14 cruises with less effort than the longer AT-17 until the AT-14 reaches 4.91mph.
***Top Cruising Speed (TCS) is determined by loaded waterline length (LWL). A longer LWL gives a faster TCS. At approximately 90% of its hull speed (when a kayak starts to produce a bow wake longer than its LWL) the effort required to continue accelerating radically increases. In general longer kayaks have higher top speeds and short kayaks have more efficient cruising speeds.
