Kayak Distribution’s Mark Hall shows us around the newest boat in the fleet for Tahe Marine – The Reval HV. Find out if this is the boat for your type of paddling.
Video: New Reval HV Kayak
Video: Yakima’s Sweet Roll System
Yakima’s new rack creation, the Sweet Roll, is all about helping you get your boat up on your vehicle quicker and easier so you can spend more time kayaking. For more kayaking videos go to Adventure Kayak TV.
Video: New Car Top Solution
Summer gives us the scoop on one of the new car top kayak solutions from Yakima at Outdoor Retailer. Check out this J cradle system to see you you can get more boats to and from the water safer and easier. From Rapid Mag TV.
Video: New Accent Paddles
Luke Hopkins shows Rapid Media founder and publisher Scott MacGregor a few of the paddles for kayakers in the Accent lineup and tells us that the next winner of the Worlds might be wielding one! From Rapid Mag TV.
Dagger Re-Releases the RPM
If you were born in 1997, you’re eligible to get your driver’s license this year. You also just missed the Summer Olympics in Atlanta, the cloning of Dolly the sheep and The Spice Girls’ first album, Spice. Perhaps most importantly, you missed the 1996 release of the most successful whitewater boat of all time—the Dagger RPM.
Not to worry, 16-year-olds (and everyone else), history is repeating itself with the re-release of the boat Rapid magazine readers voted the Most Revolutionary Whitewater Boat of All Time.
Short for Radical Play Machine, the RPM changed the river running game. “Paddlers wanted a kayak that guaranteed them access to all the latest freestyle moves in more spots on the river,” explains Marc Lyle, the RPM’s original designer. “We were assigned with the mission of delivering this design with one additional aspect in mind—it had to be a boat that everyone could paddle. The result redefined playboating as we knew it.”
Within the first year of launch, Lyle went on to sweep the competitive freestyle circuit with six wins and four second-place finishes in the 10 comps he entered.
“Many people have been going back to the original RPM and running their local rivers,” says Dagger Product Manager, Scott Stewart. “There’s limited availability of the original RPM, so it’s the right time to allow those not lucky enough to already own one to experience this classic style of boat.”
Classic indeed. The RPM’s flat stern allows huge squirts. Its displacement hull also has an uncanny balance of stability and rollability. These forgiving characteristics are what make the boat so beginner-friendly.
Dagger left the old-school favorite’s hull alone, but it will be offered with updated outfitting. The snazzy thermomolded seat, a bulkhead footbrace system and adjustable hip pads and thigh braces way outperform any outfitting available back in the days when MTV actually played music.
The RPM is available for a limited time through retailers now. Just like in 1996, it comes in one eight-foot 11-inch, 60-gallon size. No word yet on the re-release of the bigger RPM Max.
Download a couple episodes of Friends and grab a case of Snapple iced tea for the full 1996 après-paddle experience. If you’re only 16, these references are probably lost on you. Fortunately, you can pick up your own shiny new RPM and stop wondering what it was like to paddle in the nineties.
This article appeared in Rapid, Summer/Fall 2013.
Babine-Skeena Rivers Trip
Beginning in the Babine Mountains, this trip offers mountain scenery, canyons and wildlife encounters. Put in at Nikitkwa Lake and take out four to six days and 130 kilometers later in Kispiox. Bring your fishing rod—the Babine River is one of the richest salmon spawning areas in the world. Volume on the Babine is medium but expect larger volume on the Skeena with excellent play waves. A solid class III+ run.
Local Beta
Check out Smithers’ paddle shop, Aquabatics (www.aquabatics.com), for last-minute trip needs. The wildlife in the area is rich—expect to see eagles, salmon and deer. Count yourself lucky if you see moose, wolves and lynx. This is one whitewater trip where you’ll want to bring bear spray.
This article originally appeared in Rapid, Summer/Fall 2013. Download our free iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch App or Android App or read it here.
Here’s Why The Ocoee Is Nova Craft’s Best Open Boat
Before we talk about the Nova Craft Canoe Ocoee, let me first take you back in time to 1993. I was lined up for my instructor course’s final run at the top of Chalet Rapids. I had the option of running the course director’s then new Dagger Ocoee or doing my solo exam run in a 17-foot Prospector.
All I’d heard for the past 10 days of the course were the instructors talking about how edgy the Ocoee was. How it was an advanced paddler’s boat. And it was then. At the time, the hot boats had been the Dagger Genesis, Impulse and Prophet and the Mohawk Viper 11—all very soft and forgiving by comparison. I admit it—I was afraid of the Ocoee. And with a pass or fail run ahead of me, there was too much at stake.
Nova Craft Canoe Ocoee Specs
Length: 11’3″
Width at gunnels: 25″
Width at waterline: 27″
Depth at bow: 21.5″
Depth at center: 15’5″
Depth at stern: 26″
Rocker: 5.5″
Capacity: 500 lbs
Royalex: 38 lbs
Royalex Plus: 44 lbs
Two years later I picked up a well-used Ocoee and learned to paddle it. As my skills improved, I learned to love it. It was the right boat at the right time.
By ‘99, in Rapid’s first open canoe shootout, all the intermediate open boaters wanted to be in the Ocoee, but most admitted they were still uncomfortable with its abrupt transition from primary to secondary stability. Like most flat-bottomed, hard-chined boats, the Ocoee doesn’t like to stay level; it wants to be tilted one way or the other. And that takes some getting used to.
The Ocoee set the standard for front surfing and technical paddling. Advanced paddlers love slicing across currents and truly carving deep into eddies. The Ocoee was also the first production boat that allowed advanced paddlers to offside tilt and engage outside edge to pivot turn an open canoe.
One of the best things about the Ocoee is how much you can play with its shape. I cut the top down, removing some of the Ocoee’s prominent sheer—the swooping up at the bow and stern. Then I narrowed the gunwales, rounding the bottom and sharpening the chines, making for faster and sharper carving.
Want it even faster? Andrew Westwood did. For slalom racing he played around with the shape, drawing the bow radically narrower than the stern. Westwood’s race boat was shaped like an arrowhead.
For creeking and rodeo (it was called rodeo then), Mark Scriver, Paul Mason and others sawed a foot or so out of the center and bonded the bow and stern back together. This modification was so successful, designer Frankie Hubbard ran with it to design the Pyranha Prelude—now the Esquif Prelude.
Nova Craft offers their Ocoee in either a Royalex or Royalex Plus, or what we used to call Royalite and Royalex. You have three gunwale options: vinyl, ash trim or bare hull.
Instructor Gail Shields, whose Bell Ocoee was used to build the Nova Craft mold, says she hasn’t been babying her lighter Royalite version and it’s holding up very well. She opted to install her own gunwales and Mike Yee Outfitting to create a hot rod of a canoe, weighing in at a crazy light 39 pounds. In fact, she needs the extra weight of nylon airbags so the boat will be legal in the rec class at ACA slalom events.
So, should you try Nova Craft’s version of this 20-year-old design? I think so, and so do Rapid readers. The Ocoee was voted favorite solo open boat of all time in our 2012 best boat survey. And if you still don’t think you’re ready for an Ocoee, no trouble, in the meantime Nova Craft makes a fantastic Prospector.
This article was first published in Rapid‘s Summer/Fall 2013 issue. Subscribe to Paddling Magazine’s print and digital editions here , or browse the archives here.
Scott MacGregor is the founder and publisher of Rapid. For the record, he passed his solo instructor level in the Prospector.
Gail Shields on the river with the first production Nova Craft Ocoee. | Photo: Brian Shields