Today was another breakthrough day for me in the Ringer. The river here in Columbus is running a low 2 generators and not a good level to train on Good Wave for USA Team Trials. Instead of hanging out, I decided to take the Ringer out for a spin.
While I expected it to be fun, doing some squirting, fast ferries, eddy turns, and some surfing, it became a crazy fun surf session in the end.
The rapid in downtown Columbus is pretty fun at all levels and has some sweet eddy lines and ferries. If you haven’t paddled a boat as light and fast as the Ringer, it makes just zipping around an entirely new experience. In and out of the eddies, it carves on the inside edge, or transfers to the outside edge and squirts and still carries its speed around the turn. It is fun doing the same eddy both ways and being rewarded with a fast turn that carries the speed, but one is an inside carving edge and the other is a squirt turn.
To cut to the chase, the mind-blowing event was surfing a green wave below Good Wave. Fairly fast water, about 3’ tall, fluctuating from flat to medium steep (can’t surf but a few seconds, if at all in a Rock Star for a reference point, unless it happens to be steep at that moment and then for only a few seconds).
I got on this wave and was immediately doing things that I have never done on a wave like that before, EVER. Several factors created this perfect storm all at once. (DC boaters are going to DIE over this boat on Rocky Island or O’Deck!).
- The Ringer is lightning fast on a wave. It is an almost unnatural feeling- like it is powered or something.
- The Ringer is also ridiculously loose on a wave. Not “loose” but crazy loose. It feels effortless to kick it to 90’ to the current and pull it back to a front surf as nothing happened.
- It is super lightweight- this isn’t just for carrying and loading, but for paddling. When surfing, turning the boat from one direction to another, accelerating, spinning, or squirting, the weight reduction is not just apparent. Still, it feels amazingly effortless to do things that typically are very hard.
The sum total of all of that during this surf session- BIG smiles for starters, but lots of things came together at once that provided me with an experience I have never had before, and I’ll suggest that nobody else has yet either.
I’ll try to describe it. I may have GoPro footage that helps show it, but I’ll have to get somebody to come video me to really have you understand how this boat can set you free and provide experiences that were not possible before.
I was asked by a guy in the eddy a very intelligent question. “Is there anything the boat doesn’t do that you wished it would?” He also asked, “Does the boat do anything better than you thought it would?”. I don’t know the guy asking the questions, but he is in business or is an engineer, or marketer, or something because they are revealing questions to determine if the person answering them is selling something, or telling the truth, and it cuts to some important points quickly. The reality is that when I design a boat, like the Ringer, I know what it doesn’t do, what it does do, in theory, and when I first paddled the prototype I then find out what it doesn’t do as well as I hoped, etc. The first Ringer prototype had several areas where it didn’t perform well.
- It was edgy- the parting line was too low on the stern. I had to raise it a lot for the final version and the results were predictable and we have an amazingly easy boat to paddle now.
- It was not quite enough stern rocker- the stern was too low for a lot of drops (stern taps), and it forced the bow down too much for surfing, and certain downriver features to keep the bow dry (UBER dry bow before, and now it is ridiculously dry!)
- Didn’t squirt easily enough- needed a lower volume stern and improved wing shape.
- Bow deck was too big and not ergonomically working right. There wasn’t a good place for your knees, etc..
This final version answered all of those challenges, simply by redesigning it and tweaking it. Today I feel 100% fired up and relieved that I did it right and that my CAD design partner, Mark Nordstrom, nailed each curve and surface that I wanted to change in a way that produced the best results given the design goals.
Now to the fun part! I have been paddling whitewater at a high level since 1979 and paddled the best kayaks ever made by others, or designed my own and most of them were not all that bad. I have done every kind of whitewater kayaking over the years (squirt boating being the least amount, Wildwater being second, although I did make both the USA Squirt and Wildwater teams). Creeking, Creek Racing, First Descents, Expedition, slalom, downriver, boater-cross/Extreme slalom, Freestyle, general river running, flatwater sprint, sea kayaking, surf ski, surf kayak, and a bit of polo. It is all fun stuff. My 15 years of surfing big river waves in long boats (Mirage, Dancer, Frankenstein, Kinetic, etc.) and doing big enders, back surfing, etc. I worked hard to be the best at pirouettes, surfing, etc.. Waves are infamous in the kayaking world and should be. Rocky Island and O’Deck on the Potomac for example. Those waves have seen the best kayaks and best kayakers (and C1er’s) in the world surfing them since the 70’s and 80’s. Every type of boat, with the best boaters in the world on them. Something just changed today for me. (Not in concept, but in reality). I know for 100% that I can go to these waves today and do what has never been done on them before. The Ringer changes the game. It is something called a “Breakthrough moment”, that a friend of mine, Jeremy, brought to my attention, that really defines it well. When you can use existing skills and experience and apply them to a new tool/kayak and you are suddenly broken free from constraints and start doing things in the kayak that you have never done, and they are easy, it is one of those moments.
What was so special? Here is what I just experienced, which I don’t yet have a video of, but can do it on video first try and over and over again, that is amazingly fun!
Front surfing- fast easy, carving hard and staying on the wave, with no weight slowing down the fishtailing back and forth. This sets the stage…
Slip sideways on a flat, green wave, grind it, and pull the stern behind me again for a front surf, without having to sprint again to stay on. Effortless and Crazy fun.
Spin- yes, you can spin a lot of kayaks, but sorry, this isn’t a normal spinning wave. Spinning and doing roundhouses on this wave was crazy. Easy again if you know how to spin, and it was a wave that spinning isn’t normally possible or only if it surges just right. Now it is spin at will.
It was like being set free to do anything you wanted and the boat seemed to want to do it all. I am going to find myself paddling a lot more now. If the water is a good level for Goodwave- I’ll be training. If not, I’ll be paddling my Ringer on “new ground”.
🙂
EJ
