Speeding with the Epic 16X (part 4)

Today we had a beautiful evening: clear skies and no wind. Perfect conditions to try how fast I can go with the 16X.
As it is Wednesday I choose the kayak-club as destination: 18 km vv.

The first 9 km I averaged 10 km/h. In the 16X this is a fitness-level-pace as I started sweating and realised I worked hard. To feel the difference I slowed down till 9km/h shortly: that was a world of a difference because it felt as if you could maintain that for hours. A very relaxed pace.
Halfway after 5 km I also made two sprints to try what maximum speed I could reach: 12,5 km/h. Honestly I did expect to go faster than that, but the short length of this kayak (under 5 meter) might be a restriction for the maximum speed. Later I will try the sprint again, being fresh myself, to take a look how much faster I can push the kayak.

After a pause of 45minutes I went back home and did promise myself to paddle not faster than 9km/h. However while paddling this became a variation between 9 - 9,5 km/h; feeling as a comfortable speed.
I must confess that I did have to work harder over the last 2 km’s to maintain at least the 9km/h; probably you can become a bit tired after paddling a distance of 19km.

So what can we conclude: The 16X is a fast seakayak which you can paddle at 9km/h. If you want to go faster you have to work much harder meaning that the maximum hull-speed of this kayak is somewhere near 10-11 km/h. But still: for such a short length of 4,88m, this kayak is remarkably fast.
And what is nice, is that this kayak is not only within reach of experienced paddlers because the stability is very forgiving, meaning that also less experienced paddlers can paddle the 16X. Of course this is a subject for further investigation because I have to paddle the 16x at sea first before I can give a more definite statement about this.