Wavewalk Kayaks

2009 was a spectacular year for Wavewalk kayaks -

Our sales this year grew by 64% compared to 2008, which was our best year so far. This is encouraging in view of the continuing slump in the boat and kayak markets, caused by the economic recession.

Our new W500 kayak series turned to be a resounding success, with W500 kayaks taking the lead over the old war horse, the W300.

Most pleasing is the fact that so many W500 clients have taken the time to send us great reviews and stories.

The W500 seems to be a kayak that people simply LOVE, including those who’ve already owned or used a W300 before. As some of these clients have put it: -”Wavewalk took the world’s best kayak and improved on it!”.

Some W anglers go as far as saying the W500 is better than any small fishing boat, and not just fishing kayaks.

This year we expanded our exports, with shipment to clients in Norway and Australia, and increased our sales in New Zealand and Canada. We look at this geographic expansion with particular satisfaction.

In 2009, more clients have ordered a second, and sometimes even a third W kayak from us. This shows to us that once people get used to W kayaks for either paddling or fishing, they’re not likely to change, or go back to an old-fashion sit-in or SOT kayak. In other words, it means we’re on the right track.

Our website wavewalk.com attracted over 150,000 individual visitors this year, including tens of thousands of returning visitors. This is an annual increase of over a third compared to 2008. Our blog is vibrant with stories, pictures, movies, comments and discussions, and has a growing number of fans - some of which aren’t even Wavewalk customers (yet…)  In other words, although we’re still a small company, we’ve already established a significant web presence.

The more we listen to our customers the more we learn, and it helps us improve our products, as well as the service we provide. We would have not succeeded in making the W500 as good as it is without people commenting on their experience with the early models of the W300, and its latest version - the 2008. The blog we introduced in 2008 proved to be an increasingly useful means of communication between our customers and us, as well as between the customers and themselves. This blog is also fun, which is a bonus for everyone

And last but not least - our customers: You people proved to be courageous, patient, creative, supportive, productive and loyal beyond anything we had expected, or deserve . You people made this year great for Wavewalk, and we are very grateful to you!

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2010!

Yoav

What is Fishability?

Dictionaries define fishable as an adjective meaning ‘that may be fished in’. By extension, the noun fishability can be used to describe the usefulness of a fishing craft for catching fish, from the angler’s well being and performance standpoints.

Basically, you can catch fish just sitting on a log in the middle of a pond, or a river - so being able to cast a line and catch fish from some floating object doesn’t automatically mean it scores high in fishability. Similarly, the fact you’re catching fish from your kayak, and you know other anglers who fish from kayaks, doesn’t imply your kayak or similar ones score high in fishability. In fact, they might score very low.

How to Measure Fishability?

Different anglers require different things from a fishing boat, and value different things when they rank the qualities of a fishing kayak. Such attributes and priorities can be subjective, but it’s possible to use them as well as professional design standards to create a universal fishability score system.

The Fishability Score System

Since fishability is a multidimensional notion, a fishability score should refer to the different factors that contribute to the kayak’s fishability according to their relative importance.

However, since little data are available about anglers’ exact preferences, such score system should not be portrayed as scientifically accurate, and therefore should not use numbers or other standard grading method.

Fishability Factors

Stability

Fishing kayaks are wider than average kayaks are - anyone can see that. The reason for is that being wider makes sit-in and sot kayaks more stable, and stability is a basic, very important attribute that any fishing kayak should offer. The problem is that being wide doesn’t necessarily make a sit-in or SOT fishing kayak stable enough. In other words, those fishing kayaks’ fishability is diminished by the fact they are not stable enough for most anglers to feel fully confident while fishing from them. This is why you’ll see an increasing number of sit-in and SOT fishing kayaks outfitted with outriggers, and other sit-in and SOT fishing kayaks who are excessively wide - to a point where paddling them becomes too difficult, even with a rudder.

When stability is concerned, W fishing kayaks score much higher in fishability than any other fishing kayak does, whether sit-in or SOT. It’s possible to say that W kayaks are the only kayaks that are stable enough for fishing.

Comfort

Comfort in the ergonomic sense is by far the most important attribute a fishing kayak has to offer, and the main factor which determines its fishability. This is because kayak fishing is practiced as a sport, and a leisure activity, that is for fun. As such, it is required to enable a pleasant, relaxed and non-painful fishing experience to the user, and that’s where sit-in and SOT fishing kayaks fail completely. The reason for this failure is that all sit-in and SOT kayaks feature the same sitting arrangement comprising a seat and footrests, that lock their users in a single, uncomfortable, non-ergonomic posture called the L-Position, without offering them a chance to get some relief by switching to other positions. This leads to a range of undesirable physical sensations ranging from fatigue and discomfort to leg numbness, leg pain, butt pain, and back pain (yak-back). In some cases the impact can be back injuries.

Another discomfort factor is the wet ride: Being forced to paddle and fish while getting continuously splashed and sprayed isn’t acceptable for many anglers, who won’t fish from sit-in and SOT kayaks for this reason.

These ergonomic problems are obvious, and most people perceive them as a turnoff albeit the efforts of kayak manufacturers and vendors to play them down and dismiss them. As a result of these problems, not too many anglers are drawn to kayak fishing, and out of those who start practicing this sport many end up quitting - sooner or later.

In other words, sit-in and SOT fishing kayaks’ fishability score is very low, if only for these reasons. In contrast, W fishing kayaks feature a comfortable saddle offering multiple, interchangeable positions, including standing and full stretching. This is why W kayaks are the only ergonomic fishing kayaks, and therefore the only truly fishable kayaks in the long run.

Deck and Cockpit Functionality

Sit-in kayaks have tiny, restrictive, and therefore less than adequate cockpits, and SOT kayaks feature no cockpit at all, since in essence they are just paddle boards outfitted with backrests and footrests. This greatly reduces these kayaks’ fishability, since it makes it hard for anglers to fish out of them comfortably when handling gear, tackle and fish are concerned.

Remember: In order to score high in fishability, a boat or kayak should feel great to fish from, and ‘possible to fish from’‘ simply isn’t enough.  The only fishing kayaks that feature a real, full size cockpit and deck are W kayaks, and this is why they are truly fishable.

Storage

Fishing requires gear and tackle, as well as space for storing fish. Sit-in and SOT fishing kayaks feature hatches, which are too small, not absolutely watertight, and hardly accessible to the angler once he or she is seated in the kayak.

This is clearly unacceptable in fishability terms, and the golden standard is set by W fishing kayaks that offer plenty of internal, dry, and always accessible storage space.

Mobility

Mobility is about being able to start a fishing trip anywhere, go wherever you feel like, and beach whenever and wherever you want.

When compared to most bigger boats, fishing kayaks offer advantages in accessing certain spots, mainly in shallow water, and obviously in no-motor zones.  Still, sit-in and SOT fishing kayaks don’t offer the same degree of mobility that W fishing kayaks offer, because W kayaks enable launching and beaching in places where launching and beaching other kayaks is too hard. In addition, while going over obstacles present an absolute barrier to other kayaks, W kayaks offer ways to overcome such restrictions in mobility.

It terms of fishability, W kayaks score considerably higher than sit-in and SOT fishing kayaks.

As for pedal-driven fishing kayaks, those score even lower than regular, paddle activated sit-in and SOT kayaks.

Stand Up Fishing and Paddling

Being able to fish while standing up is an important aspect in evaluating a boat’s fishability, simply because standing up is natural, and especially desirable if you have you spend long hours fishing seated.

While certain kayak manufacturers claim some of the sit-in and SOT kayaks models they offer are suitable for stand up kayak fishing, nothing could be further from the truth: Some small stature, athletic people may be able to stand on one of those kayaks, and even cast lines, but this is far from being enough to have any of those kayaks qualify for stand up kayak fishing, because of serious safety issues:

When you stand in or on a small boat you will inevitably lose balance - sooner or later, and there are many things that can cause you to lose balance, including a moment of inattention, and catching a fish… So this is not a matter of if, but rather of when. And when anglers attempting to fish standing in a sit-in kayak or on a SOT kayak lose their balance, they fall overboard, and can lose some of their fishing gear and tackle. The result of such probable accident can vary from ‘unpleasant experience’ to drowning.

Fishing standing from a sit-in or SOT kayak is hazardous, and so is paddling standing in them, and therefore these boats score zero in stand-up fishing and paddling.

In contrast, W fishing kayaks are not only much stabler than sit-in and SOT fishing kayaks, but they also feature a 14 inch high saddle. This means that a paddler or angler standing in a W kayak and loses balance is likely to fall down on the saddle, in the most stable riding position, and avoid an accident in most cases, as well as losing fishing gear.

Tracking

Tracking is a factor that’s not related directly to fishing, as it can be measured only when the angler is paddling. However, we think it should be included in the fishability score system since it is a critical factor in paddling, and by that also affects both the kayak’s range of operation as well as it safety: A kayak that tracks poorly might become too hard to paddle in strong wind, and get out of control as the paddler suffers from exhaustion.

Sit-in and SOT fishing kayaks track very poorly, to a point where most of them require their owners to outfit them with rudder systems. Such systems are by no means ideal solutions, as they demand constant attention, and impede the kayak. A rudders might become altogether unusable in shallow water, and leave anglers struggling to control their kayaks in strong wind without any assistance. that is to say that sit-in and SOT fishing kayaks are prone to windage problems, and score very low in this fishability factor.

In comparison, W kayaks track exceptionally well, both in calm weather as in strong wind, regardless of the direction from which the wind is blowing. W kayaks require no rudder at all, since anglers who paddle them dispose of a range of effective means to control their directional stability (I.E. tracking) through changing location along the saddle, and by leaning into the wind.

This ability makes W fishing kayaks score high in the Tracking factor on the fishability score system.

I thought about this motorized W boat design a few years ago:

It shouldn’t be too hard to turn a W500 kayak into a similar ‘personal watercraft’:

Using standard aluminum tubes, the stem of the steering handle can be made to be telescopic, so it could extend and retract, thus allowing to steer while riding the saddle as well as standing up.

Also, such telescopic steering system could allow for the driver to move fore and aft on the saddle while still steering. This could be useful for dealing with different water conditions.

-Food for thought for the engineering-oriented members of the W kayak community…

Kayaking, Leg Numbness, Leg Pain and Sciatica is the latest blog post on the new Painless Kayak Fishing blog.

Something tells me that it’s going to make some people angry, but it’s also going to give food for thought to a lot more people - paddlers and fishermen who are either considering kayaks, using them, or have already given up because of back problems, which are at the root of most leg problems.

-”For me, the initial learning curve was pretty short, the “Ride” style felt quite natural, perhaps my years on motorcycles, snowmobiles, bicycles, skibikes, atv’s helped that along. I’ve played around with all the positions, standing up, tandem etc. I’m experimenting with paddling technique, weight shift etc. It’s a different kind of horse… Quick quips: stable, versatile, comfortable…
Speed: 3.5mph cruise, 5.0mph sprint, basically comparable with my 13′ day touring yak.
A guy on your forum called it a “kayakanoe”, pretty accurate.
I’ll send a comprehensive report after I’ve had more familiarization, done some customization, and have taken some photos.”

-”I discovered your micronautical.com site, very interesting… I especially like the solo sea/touring designs.

Suggestion: Add a loop at the 4 corners inside of the cockpit as leash points. This could be accomplished using the existing j-hook mount(s) used for the cockpit cover rigging.

Cheers,
Rod Ratzlaff
Lake George, CO”

(October 2009) NEW updated and comprehensive review (article) >>

June was soggy here in Massachusetts - It just kept raining and raining, and sometimes it felt like the monsoon season… -It was also another spectacular month for us, as we sold in it more than twice as many boats as we sold in June of last year.

The second quarter of 2009 (April-June) was fabulous too - we sold more W kayaks in it than in the first half of 2008.

As for the first half of 2009 (January-June), we sold as many boats in this period as we did in the entire year 2008.

It’s hard to tell what’s been causing this continuous increase, but we think it’s basically because more people realize that our W kayaks offer real advantages over ordinary kayaks, for which there is a growing sense of disillusionment. It’s also possible that more people feel comfortable with buying online, especially from a company like Wavewalk that’s been around long enough, and can show a high level of customer satisfaction.

The W500 kayak series we launched two months ago is a best seller, with a high level of customer satisfaction.

Traffic to our website was another record broken this month, with 16,835 unique visitors.

Note that our W kayaks sell in the upper tier of the price range for kayaks, which should have really hurt our sales, as normally high-priced products and services suffer more in times of economic recession.

And just for comparison, here are US Canoe and Kayak Market Statistics for 2006-2008:

Source: National Marine Manufacturers Association (NMMA)

We didn’t find data that suggest an improvement in this market during the first half of 2009, and we did find information pointing to further deterioration.




Just look at this photo:

Yesterday our website had 645 visitors, and it’s the most we’ve had this year.

The all time record was back in August 2004, after the New York Times had published an article about our first invention: shoes for walking on water (US utility patent number 6,764,363).

We chose to commercialize our second, boat invention, in the form of the W-kayak product line, and it looks like we’re on the right track.

What a month that was!

Record sales, 39% more individuals who visited our website compared to April 08, our first shipment to Norway, and the new W500 series…

I’d like to thank all those who’ve been helping and supporting us, especially our wonderful customers.

Yoav

We unleashed the W500 Series.

We tested it for the first time yesterday, on the Charles River. We were surprised that there was no surprise - The boat felt and performed as intended: Faster and stabler than our first series (now branded W300).
The new kayak’s lower spray deflector compensated for its additional width, and made it easy to move the paddle - both in the standing and riding positions.
My two sons aged 13 and 10 took turns in paddling, and had no problem at all.

The new kayak tracks remarkably well, and glides nicely on the surface thanks to its smaller draft. It’s as easy to turn as our first, smaller model.

Tandem (trio, actually):
I took my two boys with me on board. One weighs 110 lb, and the other 100 lb. Last time I weighed myself I was 200 lb. With our shoes, clothes, PFDs and paddles the boat was loaded with some 450 lb.
Still, we felt no instability, and although slower than when paddled solo, the new model wasn’t hard to paddle, and tracked very well. Turning was noticeably harder than when lightly loaded, but that should be corrected through practicing.
The longer cockpit didn’t feel crowded with three passengers, and although I sat in the back I could move my paddle freely.
The hulls slightly spread apart, pressed by our combined weight. This added to the boat’s stability, and felt good.

Our kayak sales in March jumped 114% compared to March 2008. This exceeded our best estimates.

We’ll never know what the numbers would have been without the ongoing recession, but they are encouraging even with it, especially considering the slump in the kayak market.

This closes a wonderful first 2009 quarter.  As usual for this time of year, Florida and Texas are leading in the number of orders we got, since the paddling and fishing season begins earlier in these two big southern states.

As far as the website, we had 14,000 individuals visit it in March, which is a little over 60% more than we had in March of last year.

We make this information public for the sake of the W-kayak fans who keep track of what’s going on with their favorite boat.

The new issue of Kayak Angler magazine includes the 2009 buyer’s guide for fishing kayaks. Going through the different brands and models of fishing kayaks featuring in it can be a sobering experience, or an entertaining one, depending on the reader’s mood.

As usual, all kayaks are described as being ’stable and fast’, and many are ‘designed for kayak fishing standing’, which is a misnomer if you consider their real-life capabilities. Obviously, none of this is true, but it seems that over the years we’ve all grown used to such non-truths, so we perceive them as being almost acceptable, which is too bad if you come to think of it.
What some manufacturers allow themselves to write about their fishing kayaks is sometimes unbelievable, not just only in the sense that it doesn’t inspire confidence in them or in their products, but one has to wonder how these manufacturers could have ever imagined that anyone would take their statements seriously. For example, a paddling and poling board manufacturer claims his product is no less than the world’s stablest watercraft… and a manufacturer of inflatable kayaks claims his boat is faster than any other kayak out there…
Merely quoting such nonsense makes one feel uncomfortable, but these are the pathetic facts, and they are representative of the market for fishing kayaks, where mostly over-hyped and under-performing products compete - sometimes in a contest to the next peak of ridicule.

And in case you expected to find useful innovations in kayak fishing, or new and inspired fishing kayaks designs - forget about it, as usual.

The W fishing kayak’s superior stability is not just proven - it is spectacular, and anyone who watches our demo movies is amazed by what they see.

In a nutshell, our patented stabilization technology consists of a number of unique factors working together to assure maximal stability - far more than any other fishing kayak can offer, including the widest sit-in and SOT fishing kayaks, and even fishing kayaks featuring outriggers (stabilizers).

These key stability factors are:

1. Maximum use of the kayak’s buoyancy: All the W fishing kayak’s buoyancy is located as far as possible from the kayak’s center line, where it’s the most effective in stability terms. This W kayak’s ‘catamaran’ feature gives it a powerful stability advantage. In contrast, in a monohull sit-in or SOT fishing kayak most of the buoyancy’s stabilizing capability is wasted by the fact that it’s located mainly along the kayak’s center line.
2. Maximum effective leverage: In the W fishing kayak you stand up with your feet ‘planted’ on the bottom of the hulls, that is below waterline. For example, a 200 lb W kayak fisherman stands or rides his W kayak’s saddle with his feet as low as 5.5″ below waterline. In contrast, a SOT kayak fisherman who tries to stand up on the deck of his SOT kayak has his feet at least 2 to 3 inches above waterline, with little or nothing to support and hold them in place when the kayak is tilting. This poor initial stability coupled with poor stabilization capability makes it extremely hard to stand confidently on other kayaks.
3. Maximum resistance to rolling: The W kayak features twin hulls that act as double ‘hard chines’. A chine is the area where the hull’s side meets its bottom. If a boat’s chines are rounded the boat would ‘roll’ more easily than if its chines were angular. Kayak designers would give a kayak hard chines when they try to improve its resistance to rolling, or in other words when they try to increase that kayak’s ’secondary stability’. This design principle is utilized to the maximum in the W-kayak’s twin hulls that offer twice the resistance to rolling and maximal angularity.
4. Max response time: Stabilizing yourself in a small watercraft such as a kayak is easier if you have some extra time to respond to the destabilizing event. Much of the overall instability in mono-hull sit-in and SOT fishing kayaks is caused by their poor initial (primary) stability. Those kayaks’ low effective (side) buoyancy causes them to tilt faster than stabler boats such as the W-kayak. A sudden, ultra-fast and strong change can leave you too little response time. In contrast, the superior initial stability provided by each of W-kayak hulls’ position and buoyancy makes them tilt less in terms of time and distance (depth). Therefore, each time you get destabilized in a W-kayak you benefit from some extra split seconds, as well as from a better body position, so you can react more effectively and regain control more easily.
5. Maximum ‘grip’ and safety: The W fishing kayak’s patented, 14″ high saddle adds two important things when stability is concerned, especially in the Riding position, which is the most effective paddling and fishing position in kayaks. First, the saddle gives you perfect grip through your legs, without using any straps. Second, the saddle offers you good safety in case you lose balance while standing up, because you can instantly and effortlessly ‘drop’ on it, and ‘grab’ it with your thighs and knees in the riding position. Other fishing kayaks are unsafe because they offer you no such ‘plan B’ in case you lose balance while standing up.
6. Stand up paddling capability: The W fishing kayak is designed specifically for stand up paddling and fishing, while other sit-in and SOT fishing kayaks are simply too wide, which makes them ineffective for stand up paddling due to bio-mechanical problems and poor tracking.

More about stability in fishing kayaks.

And what’s a kayak fishing blog nowadays without a movie? This movie is played in 4X slow motion in order to enable the spectator to appreciate how the kayak doesn’t tip over while a large size guy is jumping up and down and from one leg to another in it:

If you want to read more on these subjects, we recommend this article about stability in kayak design

Although 2008 was a tough year for the kayak industry, it was a record year for us, and we’re looking forward to another great year in 2009.

The numbers for January 09 are encouraging: Our sales this month topped last year’s January sales by more than 60%, and the number of visitors to our website this month increased by a similar proportion, to more than 10,000 individuals.

Why are we telling this?

Because we think our customers would be interested and pleased to know it, especially those who’ve been supporting us in various ways, and because we’d like to use the opportunity to thank all of them again for choosing our W-kayaks.

We know it’s not always easy to make such a purchase decision, especially for customers who don’t get the chance to test our product, or even see it in real life before ordering it. It’s especially tough in the current economic conditions, where every dollar counts more than it did before.

We also want to show that if what you have to offer is good enough, you can make it even in today’s hostile economic environment.


I found this old family photo of my two kids and myself, and the first prototype of what later became the Wavewalk Kayak. It dates back to 2003, and it’s quite funny to see today:

We’ve started shipping the new 2009 W Kayak models.

Customers who got the 2008 models were very pleased with the lower and sturdier spray deflector, as well as with the new side flotation, handles and other accessories. This is why it was hard for us to think of new improvements. Eventually, we did come up with such an improvement, although it’s not a major one by any standard:

The new 09′ W Kayak models have more holes in the upper part of their cockpit rim (6 actually). This feature speeds drainage when you overturn the boat after beaching it - All spray and rain water that may have drained down to the bottom of the hulls is drained out within seconds.

An additional benefit from these extra holes is the fact they serve as more attachment points for all the equipment you need to secure to your W Kayak - Whether it’s fishing tackle, or camping and photography gear.

The following text was copied from an article published on a kayak fishing website:

“This next statement is important. Kayaks are not boats. Let me repeat that, kayaks are not boats. There’s a lot of room in a boat so you can move around. Even a very small boat has much more room then the largest kayak…. -Let’s look at the situation. In a kayak you’re pretty much restricted to staying in the seat area. You’re going to be most comfortable here and this is where the stability is. “

(The author of this article is unknown)

Why is this passage interesting? -Because it reflects reality as perceived by all people who fish from SOT and SIK kayaks: Restricted space, limited mobility in the cockpit, clutter and eventually discomfort - although the anonymous writer refers to the seat area as being the ‘most comfortable’ for the kayak fisherman to be in, which makes sense only because there is practically no alternative in SIK and SOT kayaks…

Technically, sit-in (SIK) kayaks are boats: They are small, hollow vessels stripped down to the minimum functionality in terms of load capacity, speed and functionality.

Sit-on-top (SOT) kayaks are not vessels - they are boards, which can be completely filled with foam and contain neither passengers nor cargo. This is why it makes more sense to classify them as ‘not boats’, as the writer did.

W kayaks are boats, with all the characteristics of boats. They even offer enough internal space and stability for the passengers to change their location within the passenger compartment called ‘cockpit’.

The author of that article quoted here was probably unaware of the existence of W kayaks when he/she wrote it.

W kayaks even offer passengers to stand up while propelling the boat, and when fishing from it, and that’s a feature that not all bigger boats can offer.

What SIK, SOT and W kayaks have in common is their small size and light weight that offers their owners the possibility to cartop them and carry them along considerable distances on shore. This small size and light weight are essentially what differs fishing kayaks from fishing canoes, which are usually bigger and heavier - although some of the bigger fishing kayaks are as heavy as canoes, and may require a trailer…

Wayne T’s W fishing kayak is an interesting project from a number of aspects:

He first outfitted it with a pair of large size outriggers because he wanted to enjoy more stability at his advanced age (68). When Wayne is in his boat the outriggers barely touch the water and generate just little extra drag.

Wayne also outfitted his kayak with a pair or oars, with the oarlocks attached directly to the cockpit rim. He explains that the reason he did it is because it gives him better control over the boat than a paddle does.

“This is the best one man fishing boat I’ve ever used and I have tried them all…” He says, and judging by his catch he has evidence to back his words:

When he paddles it he uses a canoe paddle made from his Mohawk paddling kit.

It looks like Wayne used a pair of oars and oarlocks he took from a small dinghy, and all he had to do was to reinforce the kayak’s cockpit rim before attaching them to his boat.

Wayne also chose the simple and easy way to build his outriggers, and you can read more about what he did in this boat review.

Altogether, Wayne’s boat shows that with some planning and no big effort, kayak fishermen can literally transform their W fishing kayaks into a very different type of boat while preserving most of the advantages the original design offers.

Tagging the W as a canoe would be as technically correct as labeling it a kayak or a catamaran… It’s all of these and it’s neither, or shall we say that it’s basically a new watercraft with some canoe, kayak, and catamaran ‘genes’…

I’ve already written posts about canoing the W, and here are some new pictures:

The canoe paddle made from half a 9′ Mohawk double blade paddle outfitted with a T grip accessory is longer than most canoe paddles are, but it’s still a bit short for paddling standing in full comfort - if you’re tallish. We hope to be able to offer an extension for it soon.

And this is how you make a sharp turn - leftward in this case:

Leaning into the turn:

The left hull carries most of the W canoeist’s weight, and therefore it sinks deeper than the right hull, which carries little weight.

Being more submerged the left hull generates more drag than the right one, and thus it acts both as a rudder and a ‘pivot’ enabling sharp turns - that is relatively to this boat, which as a catamaran is a natural tracker. -The paddler paddles on the right side.

As the popularity of kayak fishing increases more kayak designers and manufacturers are drawn to offer their solutions to kayak fishermen. Interestingly, if one can judge from the solutions the main problem that needs addressing is the fishing kayaks’ poor stability.

Out of three recent, original monohull designs all three are explicitly designed to be stabler than regular fishing kayaks, and two out of the three represent experiments in combining canoe features into the kayak design - for the purpose of increasing overall stability.

The two canoe-like or canoe hybrids are different by the fact that one is a SOT and the other a SIK. Both are very wide, and are offered as solutions for flat water fishing. This could mean that either their manufacturers estimate the offshore kayak fishing market to be too small to be worth addressing, or their boats not to perform well enough in the surf. This brings up again the question of seaworthiness, and whether these designs are indeed stable, comfortable and and safe enough to be used for standup fishing.

The third new fishing kayak design is a monohull as well, but it departs from the conventional approach of trying to increase stability by making the hull wider. This design offers a mechanism enabling splitting the rear part of the kayak in two and pulling the ends sideways, thus creating a stabler platform for the fishermen to fish from. The obvious problem with this design is that once the fishing configuration is deployed the ‘kayak’ becomes nearly stationary since paddling it does not meet any standard of efficiency. This fishing kayak is not offered for offshore fishing either, which again implies that its manufacturers may have some concerns about its possible performance in the ocean.

In this context it is interesting to see that another manufacturer of fishing kayaks now offers outriggers to accompany their kayaks, which is yet another fact that shows stability to be a problem at the core of the kayak fishing concept.

Overall, the appearance of new designs and solutions that address the stability problem is a sign showing that some kayak designers and manufacturers are attentive to the real problems that kayak fisherman face. Whether any of the solutions offered are viable in the long run remains to be seen.