Peter’s Paddling Blog

The other night I went to a lecture on danish kayak history given by Bjørn Johansen and Ernst Christiansen.

Bjørn is carrying forward the legacy of deceased Jørgen Samson, who designed most of the kayaks build by Struer Kayaks. Bjørn is the designer of my Escape along with the Coastrunner and the Coastline trainers. Swedish Erik Arnstrøm recently wrote an article on Bjørn[in swedish].

Ernst is one of the major kayak dealers in the country, and have been active in the sport for a lifetime. He’s the force behind getting Bjørn’s designs into production not to mention some other ideas like this recently build K4 Trainer.

In this blog I’ve often referred to some of the kayaks I paddle as K1 Trainers. I’ve not been consistent, but often I’ve in fact referred to a special class of kayaks we refer to as turkajakker ~ touring kayaks. The Norwegians and Swedes refer to them as tour racers. This is unrelated to the “touring kayaks” in other countries.

This is a class of touring/fitness/racing kayaks defined by Samson, which is optimized and highly suitable for paddling in near coastal waters in Scandinavia. The Escape is a touring kayak pushing but not breaking the requirements of the rules. Quicker kayaks will have to race in the ICF class. Samson’s Tracer is an example of a kayak which barely doesn’t pass the tour requirements. To me these two kayaks lingers around the sweet spot of costal kayaks. I was not surprised to find that Bjørn likewise is a fan of the Tracer.

Touring kayaks class in Silkeborg two weeks ago.

If anything defines the classic danish kayak culture, its probably the development of this large range of touring and racing kayaks, which provides a smooth learning path from a beginner’s kayak to an full blood ICF racer.

Now it doesn’t take much insight in sociological mechanisms to imagine how the explosion like popularity of the sea kayak has been regarded with skepticism by parts of the old K1 community. Likewise parts of the sea kayak community has quickly turned its back on the traditional danish kayak culture. But that’s a different story.

Completely unrelated: Nelo just posted a link to this youtube video of the danish top race paddlers training. Kayak music videos are always fun.

Tuesday evening I posted a classified on the kayak federation’s board, looking for a Vajda Supersonic 01 size L in marathon layup(<8kg).
Less than 24 hours later, I got my Supersonic at close to half the price of a new one. Oh the joy!

While I’m used to the club’s Supersonic kayaks, today’s training on a completely flat lake was great.

Supersonic 01 at 7.5kg with Kevlar hull and carbon ends.

Former owner was on the US race team.

The pump is removed until I settle on a position for the seat and footrest.

With the Supersonic in my quiver, the Shadow will not find much use before summer as an ocean boat. At any rate I’m not going to sell it. I’m not really good at parting with my kayaks.

Speaking of the Shadow I did get around to install a pull bar on the Shadow’s footrest. Really it was plug and play. I bet Elio and Nelo use the same manufacture for their accessories. I’m ordering a pull bar for the Supersonic now.

Footrest equipped with pull bar.

Footrest installed inside the Elio Shadow/Dolphin/Golfinho