I think Wavewalk hit a home run!
It’s hard to believe Wavewalk could improve on the stability of the 500 series, but you did!
The new 700 series is the perfect size for two adults, & Zena (my dog), in fact my wife Susan would be along with us, but today she is behind the camera. You can see though Zena was moving around (as kids & dogs do) and there was no tipping issues at all.
The fish-ability out of this craft will be unsurpassed especially in bigger rougher water catching larger fish.
I was a little concerned about the weight of this new Wavewalk 700, however it seems to be a very manageable 80 lbs. due to the four carry handles & the slightly wider design.
Pictures from our first trip on the Susquehanna river in our new Sunshine W700 –
Fishing kayaks are the stablest as well as the slowest of all kayaks, but not all fishing kayaks are the same, and the W700 is the exception: It is the most stable kayak out there, and it is as fast as a good size day-touring kayak.
It is a well accepted notion among many paddlers and designers that a kayak can be either stable or fast, namely the more stable it is the slower it would be, and vice versa. This notion is the product of the world of mono-hulled boats, and it is true for this form of vessels, but it falls short of being applicable to multi-hulls such as typical catamarans and W kayaks, which are more stable than mono-hull boats of comparable size, while being faster too.
We’ve discussed these issues and similar ones many times in the past, because they are important. This time, we found an opportunity to demonstrate this principle in a video footage that Michael Chesloff shot of Ernie Balch testing the new W700 (see his review) –
Extreme Stability is shown by the fact that Ernie, a 65 year old big guy who weighs 300 lbs just steps into the W700 and paddles it standing up without any problem.
Exceptionally good Speed is shown through Glide, which is the ability of a kayak to keep going forward on flat water after its passenger stopped paddling. The distance the kayak covers from this point to the point where it stops is the result of the kayak’s initial speed and the resistance of the water to its passage.
Ernie is not a kayaking champion, and the speed he attains while paddling the W700 is normal for a Wavewalk kayak, that is better than what he would have attained in another fishing kayak, but what happens when he stops paddling is noteworthy, as the W700 keeps gliding over a very long distance, until it slows to a halt in a patch of thick aquatic vegetation:
Another beautiful thing that can be observed in this gliding footage is how well the W700 tracks without any intervention from the paddler, not even a rudder, which no one has ever installed on a Wavewalk kayak because these kayaks are unbeatable when it comes to another type of stability: Directional Stability, a.k.a. Tracking.
Interestingly, SOT fishing kayaks are sluggish, hard to paddle, and they can’t glide. The reason for this is not just that their hulls are extremely wide and therefore generate excessive drag, but there’s much more, and the article The secrets of the SOT kayak’s underside explains it.
I spent all afternoon yesterday fishing in the W700 while my wife Diane fished from the W500. The W700 sits flat as a table while fishing, and it moves smoothly through the water when paddling.
Both boats fit nicely inside my van.
When I paddle the W700 it is quiet and it glides. It carves nicely like a canoe when leaned over. I can paddle down narrow meandering channels easily leaning the boat to carve turns. This method helps compensate for the great straight line tracking of the boat.
Diane had the 500 and I had the 700. Both of us paddled hard for shore and it turned out that the boats are evenly matched in terms of speed with their loads of 118 and 300 lbs… I could not catch her and she could not pull away from me.
Here are pictures and a video showing me and Diane testing the W700 –
Stepping out of the cockpit, feet dry…
And this is the video “Grandma Can Paddle!” showing Diane (a 64 year old grandma) playing with our new “Sunshine” W700:
