I attended a tour at the 25th of January, organized by Hans Heupink for the NKB (Dutch kayak Association). We entered the area around the Hinderplaat (near Stellendam) that has been closed since this year. But in wintertime entering is allowed after consulting the authorities and with the restriction that the event is organized by one of the Dutch kayak-associations..
The weather conditions were not encouraging with a SE-wind of (6 to) 7Bft and a temp 1-5¢ªC. But since I wanted to test the Silhouette in real conditions, I am motivated to withstand the cold. As I used today a dry-suit for the first time, I really felt comfortably under these circumstances. These dry-suits should have existed 20 years before; thinking of all those days while changing clothes in bad weather.
Underneath I describe my observations and thoughts of today:
Surfing wind-waves.
In the beginning of the trip we were just blown away at 11km/h; the wind pushing at our backs!
When the waves built up I tried surfing them; of course! The kayak easily picks up speed starting to surf. The fact that the skeg in this kayak was broken down, meant I had to steer intensely to stay on course. But using the paddle rudder while bending backwards gave me quit a lot of surfing fun. Quite fast really. I assume that when you can drop the skeg in this kayak you can make perfect surfing-runs: super.
While surfing the bow, stays on top and has a dry ride. OK, for today the surf waves were about 50cm and not very steep. Surfing higher waves is something I would like to do as well, but I am confident that the bow has enough volume to perform well under rougher conditions. This makes me think of the first session in surf where the steeper waves were no problem.
Paddling in wind
Honestly , thinking about to paddle a kayak without a variable skeg today, I had some doubts on forehand if the Silhouette could be controlled easily in the strong winds of today. I therefor specially mentioned this fact on forehand to Hans.
But talking about weathercocking I was surprised: We paddled a few directions relative to the wind. Wind from backwards as described above was a bit difficult but would have been much better if the skeg was functioning.
Next condition was a 6Bft-wind and waves coming from my left and left-backwards: These are not the easiest directions for a kayak to paddle in wind, but the Silhouette did not really weathercock . In fact she was quite neutral in behavior and I did not miss the skeg at all.
While paddling against a 6Bft-wind at an angle of approx. 15degrees in shallow water and thus in low waves, the Silhouette performed at that moment very neutral without weather- or leecocking.
Maintaining this course became at a certain moment, when the wave-height increased en wind started to blow at 7Bft (with peaks up to 8), much more difficult as the Silhouette started to leecock. This was really hard work because the kayak is not a highly maneuverable kayak (which is on the other hand of course also an advantage for better tracking) and although the Silhouette reacts very good on sweepstrokes and edging, this was not enough today for compensating on leecocking. I even had to paddle with an extended paddle. This leecocking was partly caused by our low speed: approx. 2-3 km/h against the wind. I tried at a certain moment to sprint and while doing so the kayak did not leecock as bad any more. I was also astonished about the speed my fellow paddlers disappeared in the distance behind me. But for maintaining this speed (I guess 8km/h) for longer periods in this wind I am not strong enough and besides that I liked to join my fellow-paddlers.
After a pause it was, because of the leecocking, even more difficult to start paddling in the right direction. I solved this to make some speed in another direction, parallel to the waves, and then gradually I turned the kayak.
Today I greatly missed some knee-support on the inside of my knees with which it is possible to give more turning power to sweepstrokes.
Finally I would like to relativate these comments about leecocking: although leecocking is not pleasant it must be said that conditions of today were challenging because of the strength of the wind. Normally paddle tours will be held in lesser wind at a maximum of 6Bft. and paddling the Silhouette will be much more comfortable than because she is almost not influenced by the wind and follows a neutral course. The only issue is that I would certainly NOT recommend this kayak for beginners: if they come unforeseen in such winds they will be in trouble.
Another issue to take into account is if another person, heavier than my 70kg's , would experience the same leecocking.
Finally I can comment that the other kayaks did not show any signs of leecocking. Only when turning into the wind after a pause they had to work hard as well.
Behavior in waves
The Silhouette paddles quite dry. Even when sprinting against wind and waves, I got only a small amount of water on the deck and only a bit of spray from the bow.
Stability
Paddling on the waves today, whether they came from aft, from front or from aside, gave a confident feeling while paddling. The waves were quite regular which gave the kayak the time to find the secondary stability angle on passing each wave. Only a few times when waves were crossing each other and influenced the aftership, this gave a short itching feeling.
In fact paddling with the waves coming from aside was the most pleasant paddling; it felt like a gracious ballet on waves.
Crossing the shipping lane the waves increased and showed incidentally some cresting, and although I had to stay alert, stability was not a real problem to me nor did it feel uncomfortable.
Still the stability of the Silhouette is not very high and I was in these winds and waves not confident enough to eat something without leaning on the deck of a fellow paddler. Yes, taking something to eat out of my PDF was possible with my paddle still in the other hand. Also my waterproof notebook & pencil , to write notes on deck, was of no use to me today.
Comfort.
I wrote in earlier posts about the Silhouette in a very positive way about the bulb in the back of the seat; replacing the backband.
Today I discovered another aspect of this bulb: Paddling hard against the wind, performing sweepstrokes, edging and pushing with my feet against the bulkhead to support the paddlestrokes, results in that I pushed my lower backbone, every paddlestroke again, against the foam-covered-bulb. After an hour or so my back started hurting because my lower back became irritated. May be such a high pressure on such a small spot is not a good idea. It should be investigated if you get a better result with a more ergonomically formed block that does not press against the backbone but only against the hipbones in the back.
Additionally I can say that I expect that it should not have been so necessary to press myself against the backrest-bulb if I had the knee-support on the inside of my knees as described.
But it would be nice to investigate if such backrest-bulbs could be improved because they give you the possibility for more trunk-rotation thus realizing a better propulsion-efficiency.
Speed
I have the impression that the Silhouette is quite a fast kayak. Certainly at the moment I sprinted away, as described above. But I find it difficult to compare speed to fellow paddlers as I don't know the effect of technique and power. So in a later stage I will paddle the Silhouette alone on flat water and readout the speed on a GPS.
The kayak
It should also be mentioned that it was in the compartments still bone-dry after the tour
Advice
This is a kayak for an advanced paddler with good technique and stability. But I would say this paddler should be in his younger years, with a flexible back, to overcome the inconveniences of the lower stability during extended periods.
In general
My experiences of today confirms to me again that I personally like most a highly maneuverable low-volume kayak that basically weathercocks and can be trimmed with the skeg between lee- and weathercocking..
Why choose a high volume kayak if you don't need the volume in 95% of the tours in a year.
Tourdetails: distance 18 km; area Stellendam - Hinderplaat vv.; max speed 11km/h; Average speed 3km/h
To be continued