Inflatable Speed
Just took my first paddle on my new SIC Okeanos 12’6” Air. I had a lot of interesting impressions, and I’ll be posting my review, but I was struck by one part of the paddling experience: the speed and how it moves through the water.
I’ve spent a lot of time on all-around boards. These are oversized surf SUPs between about 10–11.5 feet long. I’ve had one model or another for ten years now. Real familiar with how they paddle. One thing they all have in common is a certain hull speed. You bring them up to about 3.5 MPH and it takes a lot more effort to move it past this threshold. It’s a limitation of the hull shape, the flat nose, curved but flat bottom, and round rails, which is really of a very large surfboard. It really wants to go over the water instead of through it. This is perfectly fine for casual paddling, but it has this basic speed limitation. A flat bottom board really come into its own when it gets above a certain speed, and then it begins to plane. To a layman, that’s when it starts skimming on top of the water instead of through it. This normally happens at higher speeds, like on a wave. Most of the time though, all-around boards are just paddled on top of the water, slowly and surely.
A flatwater or displacement board with a sharp nose, sharp rails, and sculpted bottom is designed for speed. It moves through the water in a different way. It cuts through the water, pushing it to the sides of the board or displacing it, instead of going over it. This kind of board also has speed limitations (we’re still moving through water here), but it’s a lot higher. A powerful paddler can bring a displacement race board up to 6 mph and above. While that’s not much more than a brisk walk, for a SUP it’s pretty fast.
All this is prologue to the Okeanos Air. It’s got the length of a displacement board, and it has a pointy nose like a displacement board, but the bottom is really a planing surface. It paddles like a fast all-around, that extra length making some difference. This is pretty much true for any inflatable, I think. (Maybe those new Red Voyagers are different.) They have to have those round rails. You can’t really sculpt them to a high performance. When you’re a beginner you don’t notice this, but as you get more experienced you will feel it with each stroke. You just won’t get that cleaving through the water experience.
Maybe there will come a time when inflatable shapes can be fine tuned more. Red is making some interesting experiments with the noses of their tourers, and I’d love to try one some day. In the meantime, as I make this Okeanos my new ride, I’m going to have to keep this limitation in mind.
