Yesterday I joined the club KVU playing in surf at the coast near Bakkum.

As I am reviewing the Romany-S, I took this kayak for today.

Circumstances at sea were a bit rough as the tide was lowering in combination with a NW-wind that was blowing at 4-5Bft for some time already .
The results were steep dumping waves. At first I had been accompanying a member who wanted to stay closer to shore. But when I was going to accompany the other members, who were at the outer banks, I could not reach them anymore as the dumping waves were grown so strong that they let me flipping backwards on every attempt.
If this flipping backwards is a characteristic of the Romany-S or that it’s just the waves during this session, I don’t know yet. So I will have to go for another surfing session to investigate this.

While flipping backwards, the kayak was still under control as I made high braces and was able to land safely on the bottom. Most times! The other times I had to roll back up.

Rolling was not a problem at all, as this kayak is easy to roll.

An hour later, when the tide was lowered a bit already, the dumping became less and I could make some beautiful rides.
On the front of a wave this kayak is manoeuvrable enough for fun with a seakayak in surf.
Only when you want to make a quick 180° turn to catch an approaching wave in front of you that’s not so easy of course: Most seakayaks are not able to spin like a whitewater kayak. But when catching a strong wave more or less sideways it was possible in most occasions to turn the kayak while surfing it. By leaning backwards it is not necessary to sit out a broach because most times it is possible to turn.

As the sea was quite rough, this was an perfect occasion to experience the stability of the Romany-S.
To begin with I must explain that I did not feel completely at home in this kayak because it was not tailor-fitted to me yet. The only adjustment I made was sliding a foottube over the JR-footrests for better and more reliable foot-contact. But hip- and knee-contact were not optimal for me. Nevertheless I did not experience any stability problems . Honestly, taking into account that the kayak was not tailor-fitted, I think the stability was very good without the unstable feeling after piercing a braking wave or when passing some crossing waves.


Looking at the Romany-S more technical I was not completely happy with the seat. The kayak was outfitted with a new seat-model which does not need, according to NDK, a backband anymore. Looking at the seat this seams logical because the seat runs high up at the backside thus giving some back-support while making layback possible as well.
The only issue is that you need probably more volume, than I have, in your own body at your "sitting-parts". After adjustment of the footrest in a way to create proper foot- and back-contact as well, I sat too far back on the seat and the blocks that should provide hip-contact were pressing somewhere in my upper legs. This does not feel very comfortable. The only way to improve is to glue in more foam at the back-end of the seat. Probably this will work, but with the drawback that you can land on this foam-pack while entering the cockpit from the afterdeck.
But with the seat as I paddled it this time, I missed the backband too much to feel at home. Next time I will have to try how a foamblock will help. Or otherwise I will have to use a backband.

As I was at first somewhat critical about the kneegrip, I should also write about this.
Looking at the scene of a rough sea with dumping waves were I was completely shuffled sometimes, I can say that I did not meet any problems or close encounters because of the kneegrip: My knees stayed just in the place where they should be. I think that the improved feetcontact, with the tube over the JR-footrests, also made my kneecontact more reliable.
Adding some more foam in the back of the seat could not only result in better hipcontact, as described above, but could also improve kneecontact more because I will sit more forward: as described in the first post about the Romany-S my knees thus will fit exactly in the kneebubbles (I hope) in the deck.
So next time, paddling the Romany-S, I will investigate this issue. I am curious if a more forward sitting-position will influence the characteristics of the kayak. The result could be that the kayak starts weatercocking a bit. But looking at the neutral characteristics, this can not be very disastrous. We'll see.

A more technical issue is the watertightness. In front- and back compartment I did not note any leakage: not one-drop water to be found.
In the dayhatch however I found half a litre of water, which was enough to soak my bread in the lunchbox I put in there. As I did have water in the cockpit, leaked in between sprayskirt and my waist, it could be that the water passed the foam-bulkhead. I will investigate later if the bulkhead aft of the seat is watertight or that I did not close the hatch in the proper way.

(To be continued.)

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Having not paddled the Romany S rm before, the evening of 8 Oct. was an ideal occasion to collect my first paddling experiences with this kayak and to get used to her.
Conditions were very mild on the Alkmaarder-lake (NL: Alkmaardermeer): 8okt 2008, 20.00 h, wind 1-2Bft, no waves above 10cm.

Stability
When fumbling around in the dark to close the zipper of my jacket, while leaving the club, I completely forgot I was sitting in a kayak. Maybe that tells something about the stability.
Edging the kayak felt very natural and did not give you any unstable feelings. In fact the capsizing point is very far away.

Directional stability
Paddling on the moonlight shone mirror-like lake, the Romany S paddled straight ahead. And when I dropped the adjustable skeg it felt like the kayak tracks on rails. Even when I initiated a turn with a sweepstroke, supported by edging, the kayak indicated she would like to return to her original course.
When changing course without using the skeg the Romany S responded very quickly on sweepstrokes and edging. I like this combination, making it possible to choose which directional stability you need in a certain situation.

Sit position.
Honestly I missed the backband only a bit. But I must say that the muscles of your lower back must be in shape to keep your body upright. That’s not a wrong situation, but looking around I see these days that most people does not succeed in keeping the backbone straight. So I can imagine that there are people who would like to have a backband installed behind the seat.

About the grip of my knees I can tell I was not happy at all. My knees did not fit well in the deck-bubbles where my knees were supposed to find grip. The combination of feet-position on the foot-brace-rail, leg-position and the deck-bubbles being a bit far forward for my knees, resulted in the feeling that my knees will not automatically stay in this position if required. In rough conditions this could certainly lead to loose control of the kayak because my knees will slip out of position whenever I relax a bit. I will have to investigate if it is possible to customise the deck and foot-brace to realise a more reliable contact between the kayak and me. It must be said that this comment on knee-grip is based on my legs and cannot be translated to your experiences.
Because of this lack of knee-grip I am just happy now that I was ill last Sunday (a day with 8Bft-winds), because I did plan to join the tour with Hans Heupink and paddling the Romany S.

Furthermore I admired the possibility for layback on the afterdeck. This is perfect and I just could lay flat on the deck and lay there for minutes without stability problems and without breaking my backbone.

Foot-brace
As I wrote above this is a rail with the foot-braces mounted adjustable on it. It looks a bit like the old J&R-foot-braces. The foot-braces on this Romany were a bit different however and had a locking device to secure the adjusted position. The drawback is that it is not possible anymore to slide the braces with hand or feet while sitting in the kayak, like you could with J&R.

Cockpit rim
As I wrote before the cockpit-rim of this PE-kayak is made from polyester; which is an advantage for the staying in place of the spray-skirt.
This turned out to be completely true as I just used an old club spray-skirt, which I could apply without problems.

Speed
I succeeded in paddling an exercise pace with this kayak, but I realised that this is not a fast kayak. That was proofed later this evening when I did a little competition paddling with Anoushka and Wieger. Before, while competing in my Fjord (not a very fast kayak either) with Wieger in his Xcite, I won but now I had to let him go.

[To be continued]

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In addition to the first dry impression that I wrote before, I now looked for the design-briefing which NDK followed in designing this Romany, as well as for some more technical information.

Combining the information from NDK's site and a few other sites this is what I collected as the blueprint:

As NDK also refers to the (cfg) Romany S, I mention underneath what´s written about her:
Technical:

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As the kayakclub bought herself a new Romany S rm, I got the opportunity to take a close look to this new kayak which is introduced by P&H (OEPS: I mean NDK of course) in march 2008.Later I will take her along for a paddle, but first I will take a technical look underneath:

The hull
Looking at the hull I noted that the hull is quite different from the Romany's I have seen before: This kayak almost looks like a hardchine kayak with an almost flat bottom. At first I thought this was a deformation of the PE-material (although we ordered the 3-layer material with extra stiffness) by storage on her bottom. Thinking about to prevent oil-canning, the kayak was stored on a flat bred and just in that area the bottom was very flat. So I started to "awake" Wieger by proposing hanging the kayak in bands to prevent this terrible oilcanning.
HOWEVER it turned out NOT to be that bad: looking at the internet I found that the Romany S rm is a copy of the Romany S, which is a different design with flatter bottom than the normal Romany´s. So no problem, I just discovered the difference between the normal and the S-Romany!
I only felt pleased having noticed the difference.


The cockpit
What is new to me with a PE-kayak is that this Romany has an glascockpit rim. That´s what I call a real good invention. Because such a cockpit rim will not have the usual problems with the sprayskirt slipping off OR having a sprayskirt that fits very (= read: too) tight. Yes I like this invention.

What I dont like is the width of the seat: Sitting in the cockpit I had at least 10cm free space next to my hips. So no boat contact at all. The foamblocks at the spot were ca. 5cm outside of the cockpit-rim which means this is only suited for heavy people.
But again: the internet brought the solution: I found a picture (see left) were the foamblocks were different resulting in better hip-contact. Probably NDK forgot to add the second foamblocks left and right to close the first foamblock, which is built around the bolts attaching the seat to the kayak.


The seat has no backband. Instead the backside of the seat comes high up and is padded with a foamlayer. For me this felt quite comfortable. However I can imagine that someone wants the old backband. In that case I don't see an easy solution to apply such backband to the seat.

The cockpit-rim has the NDK keyhole shape. New to me, and I regard that as an improvement, is that under the widest part of the rim the deck rises a bit. (from he picture underneath you can get an idea). This makes it impossible to put your fingers very far underneath it. This is more safe as the rim on the older polyester Romany could cause injury to fingers when someone, rafting up at sea, grips the rim at that spot.

The finishing off at the underside of the rim is a bit sharp; I would advice a bit of sanding for a more gentle feeling for your hands while carrying.

What I also like is the profiled deck at the spot were the knees come in: the deck has a little bulb fitting nicely around the knee and improving the grip you get already from the keyholecockpit.
Personally I don´t have much benefit as my knee does not reach the "bulb". Only when moving foreward for 10cm I can feel how comfortable this is. Strange issue as this kayak is designed for people from 1,60-1,90m. As I am in the middle with 1,80m my knee should fit as well. It seems that only the 1,90m-guys fit in properly.

For footbraces are installed the JR-braces on a rail. Personally I don´t like these as they force your feet into one position and having the risk of your feet slipping off them when applying much force. Your feet even can cramp. For a PE-kajak this footrest however is a practical solution. Certainly because the bulkheads are made from foam and not suitable to use as footbrace.
For individual owners I would advice to install a tube, sliding it over both footrests, creating a much more convenient footbrace. You are welcome to visit my website for more details. The text is in Dutch (sorry!) but the pictures will speak for themselves. Click here!

For paddlers wanting to mount a footpump another solution has to be found. You Are welcome visit my website for a suggestion. Click here.
The same solution is also used already on the Rockpool and Tiderace kayaks. So the simplest idea is buying a footrest from them and install it in the Romany.

The deklayout is standard as for all NDK-kayaks and has 3 compartments. The layout has enough lines and elastics on deck. In front of the fronthatch a Silva compass can be mounted.

The hatches are the flexible ones from NDK. Honestly I have problems in closing the hatches. I experienced it as almost impossible to close them properly because they don´t slip over the rim of the hatchfittings on deck.
Could it be that the PE-material of the kayak is much less slippery than polyester. In that case a bit of lubrication could help. I am always a bit careful with lubrication because that can also work the other way around getting the hatches pop-of by themselves.

The toggles were not single-lined, but that´s something owners can easily correct themselves.

The bulkheads of the compartments are made of a thick foam block which are glued. It looked very neat, but I wonder how the watertightness of the compartments will be on the long term. As this Romany S is a clubkayak (mostly handled a bit more rough than a privat kayak), this is a good testcase to review that issue over time.

For the variable skeg is mounted the system from Karitek. As I can see it´s the version with a cable and not the hydrolic system.

The control-button is placed in the side of the deck; smoothly at equal level with the decksurface. The advantage is that you can not interfere with your fingers nor paddle. But there is also a disadvantage because, while paddling, the control-button is invisible from the cockpit so it is not possible to see what the position is of the skeg. The only way is to feel with your fingers wich is not very comfortable in a rough sea. When adjusting the skeg you have also to feel where it is before sliding it. I trust however, after some time, you can find the controlbutton blindly.

More on this kayak will follow.

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