WAVEWALK KAYAKS

Any kayak designer, paddler or angler would tell you that a kayak can either track well, or turn easily, and that the longer the kayak’s hull the better it would track, but the harder it would be to maneuver, and vice versa. In the narrow and restricted world of traditional, mono-hull kayaks this is axiomatic, meaning that it requires no proof, since everyone already knows it to be true.

Wavewalk has already proven that its W300 kayak was a great tracker for a 10 ft long kayak, and did not require a rudder to help it track even under strong wind. The W300 also astonished quite a few kayak paddlers and designers by showing them that a paddler could lean it into the turn, and make very sharp turns – again, without a rudder.

Now we offer the W500 that’s much faster than the W300, and tracks considerably better. In fact, kayakers and kayak anglers compare its speed to that of a 14-16 ft long, fast fishing kayak, or a 12-13 ft long touring kayak.

The question that some kayakers and anglers have asked, and rightfully so, is whether this great tracker could maneuver easily without a rudder.
This demo movie shows how riding the saddle from its rear end changes the kayak’s hydrodynamics in a way that makes it highly maneuverable:

Leaning into the turn makes steering even more effective.

When tight maneuvers are no longer required, the paddler can go back to paddling the W500 kayak from the middle of the saddle. In that position, the W500 is perfectly balanced fore and aft, tracks perfectly, and can achieve its highest speed.

No rudder is required for either tracking or turning the W500 kayak. If you’ve used a rudder with your kayak you’d know it is really good news. This is because rudders cost money, they impede your kayak, and they have a nasty tendency to harvest seaweed and get stuck in the bottom when you’re paddling and fishing in shallow water.
In other words, rudders are pain…

By the way, aboriginal kayaks made by arctic circle people had no rudders, since the people who crafted and paddled them were better paddlers than we are.

There’s a new article available on the exciting, complex, confusing, and often daunting subject of rigging your fishing kayak.

The article is called Rigging Your Fishing Kayak: Some Basic Practical Advice

The main message it conveys is that there’s no need to hurry and start outfitting your W kayak for fishing as soon as you take it out of the box in which it came, and it’s advisable to use it at least several times as is before you decide if and what type of rigging you’d like to add to it.

The article discusses typical rigging questions like rod holders, paddle holders, rudder, seat, outriggers, motor, anchor, milk crate etc.

We recommend that prospecting clients as well as new owners of W fishing kayaks read it.

Rod Ratzlaff, a Colorado kayaker and eclectic outdoorsman, got his W500 earlier this year, and we already published his ‘first impression’ kayak review on this blog.
Since then, Rod wrote a full featured article about his W500 kayak, and kindly contributed a copy to our website.

Rod’s article has insightful observations and reflections, great pictures, and interesting links, including to his own website that’s definitely worth visiting.

Rod and his wife Toni worked together on some unique modifications and outfitting projects, including a sophisticated rudder system – Rod needs it when he sails his W500 with an umbrella! (you must see that!), a truly amazing spray deck (fairing) and an equally amazing cockpit cover, a great looking seat pad, a portable electric motor, and other smart and artistic items…

My favorite work of art is the W logo sewn on the spray deck

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.

Rudders are almost a necessity in modern SOT and sit-in fishing kayaks, simply because most of these kayaks have become so wide that they lost the ability to track, which is essential for any water craft.

The increase in width is the kayak manufacturers’ response the the demand for more stability, and it comes at a price of lesser speed and poor control, I.E. lack of tracking capability that’s often coupled with lackluster performance when it comes to maneuverability.

Interestingly, no W-kayak paddler or fisherman has ever felt the need for a rudder. This fact is amazing, considering the W-kayak is shorter than most kayaks out there, and considering the fact that people are using it for multitude of applications in a wide range of aquatic environments, including long trips in the ocean, big lakes and wide rivers, where good tracking capabilities are an absolute necessity.

So what’s the problem with rudders?

First of all, they cost extra money, and good rudders cost a lot.

Second, and more importantly, they slow down your kayak, and are often cumbersome and difficult to handle. After all, there are other things you’d like to do when you’re in your kayak, such as paddling or fishing, rather than steering with a rudder.

Third, and that’s really too bad for paddlers and fishermen who go in shallow water – Rudders have a nasty tendency to get stuck in the bottom, or bump into rocks or branches down there, or get entangled in sea weed, so they limit your range of paddling and fishing.

And fourth, like any mechanical device, rudder systems can break, and their cables can get torn. This problem can turn out to be anywhere between unpleasant and dangerous, especially if you’re far from shore and the weather is getting nasty, the wind is picking up, it’s getting dark, the tide is getting strong etc.

In sum, rudders seem to be yet another necessary evil that’s imposed on the sit-in and SOT kayak fisherman, and W-kayakers and kayak fishermen should be thankful they don’t need to purchase and use such devices.