First trip with the Skarabee

After the swimming pool session the broken backrest support had to be repaired. The strap should be also placed a bit more to the front as it was too far aft to actually support my back. Finally I decided to go for a simple solution: With a disc cutter I made a new slit in the seat side walls, a few centimeters before the old one. The backstrap goes through it, then to the front of the seat side and then backwards on the inside of the seat where it is hold with velcro. In this way the forces on the strap are well distributed on the seat sides. When the temperature rises I can make a repair of the broken seat side part, just for optical reasons. This solution has proved to be sturdy enough.

A new slit in front of the broken one

New backstrap fixation around the sides

The first real trip was on a cold but sunny afternoon. I paddled a few kilometers along the shore of the lake Gooimeer. At that time it was on the news that three sea kayakers had died in France and for some reason it witheld me to make a crossing over the open (and very cold) water alone. Happily it was the leeside shore so there were the most waves.

View on the lake Gooimeer

The seating position was perfect and the new backrest fixation worked well. The Skarabee didn't give me that sporty feeling as the NDK Explorer, it's more a comfortable ride. It needed a lot of skeg with the 3 Bft cross wind: almost all. Not a real problem but I am still spoiled with the excellent skeg working on the Baidarka that you can trim so easily with the vario skeg. The boat seemed a bit slower than the Explorer and that proved to be true after examining the GPS tracks: around 7 km/h.

Skarabee on the shore

Rolling with the VKN Skarabee

Unfortunately I owned the NDK Explorer too short for taking it to one of our scheduled swimming pool sessions. So, the first action with the Skarabee was in the swimming pool for rolling exercises.

It was the first time after my test trip in December that I entered the Skarabee. Of course with high expectations of the seating position and stability. Well, the seat was now a bit wide and the back strap too loose but the thigh support was excellent. Stability was as reassuring as I remembered.

No problem with rolling happily. Also sculling seemed easier because the Skarabee proved to be stable on a side. Probably because of the high deck. Clearly better than the Orion that was more of a 'flip-flop' between up and down and that was more difficult to hold in position while sculling.

Downside of the high deck was however the impossibilty to do a re-entry via the aft deck. The hull is simply too high to climb on easily. And no place to fixate the paddle for making a paddle bridge: the deck lines are not in a position you can put a paddle under it. May be I can make some clamps for that. Well, then I have to rely on a 'wet-re-entry-and-roll', that did work quite well.

I used both the Greenland and the Euro paddle and found the GP easier for sculling and rolling. Another argument to keep using the GP.

Unfortunately the backrest fixation broke off where the strap is fixated to the sides of the seat... grrr, I thought this was such a high quality build boat... I am still thinking about a way to fix it without doing too much epoxy work.

Also, the keel strip must be replaced as it is broken on some places. Well, let's consider this as 'normal' maintanance. The good news is that all compartments appeared to be leak free after all the swimming.

NDK Explorer last trip

Last sunday we made a long trip and I enjoyed it very much. We paddled fast with periods above 8 km/h and the Explorer proved to be a fast boat again, so far so good. However after a few hours I noticed I had trouble placing my feet, the room seems just a bit too small for a comfortable position. And the tight fit under the knee braces seems to create a bit of tension in my legs. May be the HV version would have been a better fit for me? That evening it made me think and slowly it became clear what was bothering me the last weeks:

It was the memory of the Skarabee: it's seating position, it's stability and it's manouverability: all much better than the Explorer. And the Skarabee is at least as fast. The Explorer is certainly a good boat but after the Orion and Skarabee it seems to be a step back in some way. Despite it's stunning looks, it's speed and good reputation I never felt 'connected' to the Explorer. I was clearly infected by the Skarabee...

Then things went quick: the next day I sold the Explorer already to a club member and the next day I bought the Skarabee and I picked it up a day later...

A long car for a long boat