Speed in surfski and kayak design. Have we reached the point of diminishing returns? The kayak and surfski design speed wars are over.

10-20 years ago, we entered “The Golden Age” of kayak and surfski design development. We experienced many breakthroughs in speed, from Doug Bushnell’s West Side Boat Shop line of kayaks to Epic Kayak’s groundbreaking designs such as the V8, V8Pro & V10 to the revolutionary plastic V7 surfski, Steller Kayak’s S18S, SR, and SEL, to Cobra/Aquatix with their radical Cobra Viper plastic wildwater and Eliminator plastic surfski designs.

Recently, though?

The past few years have seen incremental improvements in speed this side of K1 racing kayaks. In fact, we’ve seen incremental improvements that have shown they are slightly more advantageous to only the most elite of the “weekend warrior” class of paddlers, but are a reach too far for most of, what I like to call, “civilian paddlers.” You know, the rest of us.

Yes, you may find a few centimeters longer here and there and a couple centimeters narrower here and there, with slightly tweaked underwater hull designs, but we no longer see huge leaps in speed that the vast majority of paddlers can take advantage of. We have hit the point of diminishing returns in kayak and surfski design for the vast majority of paddlers.

When you hear top designers talking about the fastest designs being the ones that most people find stable, you know the boat designs have far exceeded the skill level of most athletes now engaged in the sport. I’ve paddled K1’s and radical boats like the West Side Dart. Yes, they are fast, but there is not much of a market for them outside of young, competitive athletes who have aspirations to compete on a national team. Most paddlers just find them too tippy and unenjoyable, and most do not have the time to invest…nor the re-entry skills… to master them.

It is time for paddlers to differentiate ourselves through form and technique. We should no longer look forward to “next year” for a faster boat design.

The kayak and surfski design speed wars are over.

The odds that “next year” will bring you a newly-designed, much faster boat based on your current skills level is almost, exactly zero.

Paddling Buddy Dave and I have been at this a long time. Our boats and skills have kept escalating, but we might be at the point where incremental boat designs can’t get us much faster.