Wednesday evening I paddled a short tour with the Cetus on the Alkmaardermeer: for a first impression.
Because I may (Henk and Leo were so kind to offer me the use of their kayaks) test the Cetus, such an impression is important for me to know if it is necessary to do some customising in the cockpit.

My first thoughts are:

- Stability is outstanding: the primary- and secondary stability feel very secure.

- Manoeuvrability. The Cetus is easier to manoeuvre than, for instance, a Sirius. When you are looking for a very manoeuvrable playboat, the Cetus is not for you. But to my opinion the Cetus is easy to manoeuvre when edging her. I expect the Cetus to perform as a steady kayak at sea.

- Edging is not difficult and feels solid.

- Speed. My first paddle strokes felt quite fast. While paddling however, her speed felt quite normal. Therefor I think she certainly is not a slow kayak; but also not extremely fast. May be you can position her as a bit above average of seakayaks nowadays. Of course I have to investigate this further in a later stage.
While sprinting I could easily keep up with an Exite.

- Comfort. The seat-position is pleasant. The footrests are easily adjustable, even when seated.
The knee-contact, for my knees, will require some padding with additional foam to create a painless knee-grip.
The cockpit is big enough for easy entrance and exit.

Well finally: I think that I can trust the Cetus and that testing her at sea will be a pleasure.

More on the Cetus will follow.

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Although I got the impression of the Silhouette being quite fast, I did not look in detail yet to the speed-aspect of the kayak.
Last week, being in the mood for a workout, I took her along on Wednesday-evening for a trip to the club planning to paddle 18 km's.
Being fresh, I started my warming up and measured 9- 9,5km/h; being easy. I tried also to paddle at 7- and 8 km/h but that was difficult to maintain, as this was too slow for me at that moment.

Being "on steam" after 4 km's, I started varying my speed:
- Paddling 8,5 km/h felt as a very natural speed in this kayak: being a speed that I could just maintain forever.
- A good exercise-speed was 9,5-10km/h: Creating sweat on my head. But I must say that the 10km/h is not something I could go on with for longer periods.
- Going for a full sprint I reached 11,8km/h with the first attempt. But this was something I could not reach again with the second and third attempt; it stopped than at 10,5km/h.
- Paddling on the lake against a 3Bft-wind I reached, as exercise pace, an 8,5/km/h, sometimes increasing to 9km/h.

On my way back my energy level was going down (beginning of the season ) and after 15km I was just tired and had to work for it. I found it interesting that I ended up at the 8-8,5km/h, which felt so natural for this kayak. I could speed-up to 9km/h though: but only by using more trunk-rotation. However this rotation did nog feel very comfortable anymore because my back started being a bit irritated. I did improve the backsupport-block in the seat quit a lot already, but the customising was apparently not yet enough for my back.

As I paddled the Silhouette with improved knee-contact on flat water tonight, I noticed the benefits as I had much more control, better manoeuvrable and better stability while edging.
I should have done that earlier.

Summarising:
In flatwater-conditions and light winds a good cruising speed is 8-8,5 km/h
But also 9,5 km/h can be maintained for some time while paddling at exercise-pace.
Going above 10km/h felt if going above the maximum speed of the hull-shape, Clearly this can not be maintained for longer periods.
With these figures I think you may conclude that the Silhouette is not a slow kayak.

I would like to comment that the speeds as mentioned, depends of course on your fitness-level and technique, but I think they apply to an average, trained paddler.

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Arnold inspired me to customize his cockpit better. And so I did. I used foam to make the backrest more fluent without the rim pressing my tail-bone anymore. And for my knees I made some foamblocks as kneegrips and attached them with doublesided tape.
Today, the 29th of march, I had to choose between Hans' coldwater-workshop and playing in surf with Chris and Anoushka from the club. As it was rather late yesterday-evening and because Arnold did not go for the workshop, I chose for surfing. Anyway I did not subscribe for the workshop last monday.

The sea was perfect for paddling the Silhouette and to experience if the customizing makes a difference. And yes, it does!

At first we paddled north for 45minutes between two sandbanks.This was due to the angling competition on the beach which was planned to end at 12.00h. So we kept outside of their lines and ugly hooks.
At out left side, on the outerbank, there were towering, intimidating waves up to 2 meters and to our rigth the surging of steep breaking waves. As the tide was going down the waves were hungry, steep beasts looking for a lonely paddler to eat.

Between the banks the waves were rather irregular and I noticed that the Silhouette was more manouevrable thanks to the kneegrips.
I think it makes a difference what the size of your upperlegs is. As mine are not too thick I need kneegrips to prevent my knees to slip away at the moment you need grip.

The waves between the two banks were also handy for learning to trust the secundairy stability as back-up for the low initial stability. After a while this worked out very well: just relax and grip the kneegrips only when needed. Still the Silhouette is not a very stable platform. But I guess she was not ment to be so by her designer ;-)

When the anglers were gone we started surfing. Because of the speed of the Silhouette I could easily pickup a wave before it starts cresting. I had some very nice rides and managed even to carve them in a semicircle.

The low primary stability made it sometimes necessary to make a very quick low brace in the soup after passing a steep, cresting wave.
When the waves were so steep that I ended up in a bongoslide, it was pleasing that the Silhouette is so easily edged into the waves with a high brace. The new kneebraces were also helpfull there.

The backrest was also much better and did not hurt anymore. The only issue was a numb feeling near my tail-bone. It's just that the shape of the backrest and foam must fit exactly against your back. When sitting with my back a bit rounded the backrest fits much better. But that's not the way I paddle. This indicates however that more improvement is still possible.

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What can you say about a kayak, having paddled her only for 10 minutes.

As Hans described in his blog we had a very nice sunday, together with Monique and Stef (click here for Hans' blogpost) while they showed their Black Pearl in her home: salt water.

While paddling next to Monique in her new, self made kayak, it is nice to see how the White pearl (Monique painted it in white) slices the waves. We in our "modern" kayaks (AnasAcuta's and an Aquanaut) are rocking much more than the pearl, who is just piercing the waves.
Of course you have thus a somewhat wet-ride, but who cares if the sprayskirt functions well.

The black pearl is a really nice kayak with a width of below 50cm. Together with a length of 5,33m this makes for a fast kayak. At least she felt very fast when paddling her.
Of course the stability is less than that of an AnasAcuta but the kayak does not feel nervous because of that. The kayak gives confidence while edging.

What did make me a bit nervous was that I only could get into the cockpit with a bit of pain. Logically because the kayak-dimension were tailorfitted to Monique. So I did not dare to try a wet exit, not wanting to provocate problems because of being trapped inside the cockpit.

As Monique wanted to see other paddlers acting in her kayak, I performed some extreme edgings and tried all kind of strokes. Paddling a circle while paddling in waves and while edging, the Pearl behaves very compliant in doing what I wanted her to do.
I think she is easily being corrected for weathercocking and does not really need a variable skeg for that.

Hans performed, without problems, a whole range of Greenland rolls and I added some normal rolls coming up backwards, as well as bent forward. Rolling was easy to do, even with the contact for knees, hips and feet not being optimal for me. Also sculling and high braces were very easy to perform.
What wonders me was why this kayak, having quite a straigth deckline, is not easily to turn completely upside down: with my PDF on I could not easily turn under water to the other side. For someone able to roll perfect on both sides this is no problem ofcourse.

Surfing seems to be exiting and I wonder how deep the bow will sink while surfing bigger waves. Today a stern-rudder was enough for steering in surf as pearly obeyed very good on that, but I can imagine that an extractable skeg could be helpfull in following waves.

After those 10 minutes paddling the Pearl, some thoughts triggered me a bit.

So am I interested to know how a Black Pearl performs while heading out for sea in heavy surf. I expect it could be something like just piercing the waves while disappearing (completely?) under water, but with less chance of being thrown backwards (I expect).

The other way seems also interesting: landing in heavy surf. This makes me think of the film on YTube where the prototype of Freya Hofmeisters' playboat (looking a bit like the Pearl) was tested in surf and where the paddler made a series 2 or 3 cartwheels: looping forward frontally from one wave to another.

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Last weekend I spoke with Arnold and Stef; both paddling a Silhouet themselves. I asked them about their experiences regarding leecocking with the Silhouette.

Interesting to get the same answer in both occasions: "No, I don't have problems with that!"
Amazing, because I certainly noticed leecocking under certain conditions.

I experienced such answers before when asking owners for experiences with their kayaks. I guess this has something to do with being experienced, as well as having found ways to handle the certain behaviours of their kayaks.

That's of course another approach in looking at a kayak:
- Owners look at their kayaks like how they actually can paddle her under conditions they normally paddle.
- I, when testing kayaks, look at kayaks from the perspective HOW they behave and if a novice could possibly handle that or not.

Of course I could handle the Silhouette as you can read on my post from 25 january. But I noticed that I had to work for that. And having paddled a lot of kayaks, I know that there are kayaks that are easier to handle on this aspect.
Therefor I think that, although a nice kayak, the Silhouette is for more experienced paddlers because a novice could get into trouble if he or she is not able to steer the course they want.

Thinking about weather- and leecocking now, a realise that it is maybe a better idea to split up the characteristic, called leecocking, into 2 different issues:

- a) When a kayak turns away from the wind because of the balance in the wind: the bow offering more lateral surface to the wind in combination with a stern offering more lateral surface under water compared to the bow.

- b) when the bow is blown away by the wind at the moment that the kayak glides over a wave temporarily offering more surface of the bow to the wind.



Having thought it over, I think it is not fair to call the behaviour, as described under b), also leecocking because this is not the real leecocking as being caused by the balance of kayakdesign and because it happens to all kayakdesigns.

Maybe it is a better idea to call this behaviour "WAVECOCKING", describing what happens actually: a wave causing the bow being blown aside.


Starting to use this new word directly, I think there is another reason why some kayak-owners notice less about "wavecocking", simply because they are fast paddlers.
This certainly is the case with Arnold.
Because of higher speed, the kayak has a greater forward impact, making it more difficult to change the kayak's course. Besides this it could well be that the side plane of the bow creates a certain "wing"-or wedge-effect, because of which the water is pressing the bow back harder against the wind.
For the Silhouette this turns out very good as she certainly is a kayak that can be paddled fast in waves.
When testing kayaks I mostly are not doing a total work-out, so I am not paddling at maximum speed. Beside this, I paddle a test-kayak not alone at sea thus having to make my speed to match with that of my companion's.

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