Curious about the speed I took the Amarok on a short trip. First, I inserted some hard foam against the bulkhead to get a better footbrace. It was better but still a bit too far away. I recorded the trip with Strava. I tried to paddle 'reasonable' fast, not speeding. Here are the results:
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I think 7.0 - 7.3 km/h is a reasonable speed and comparable with the Orion and Skarabee. The Explorer would have been faster.
There was some light wind about 2 Bft. The Amarok did show some weathercocking. As I took some gear in the front compartment I think this made the weathercocking worse. So on the return I put the gear in the rear compartment more close to the middle of the boat. My first impression is that the skeg is not very effective. It needs a lot of skeg to correct the slight weathercocking. The skeg is also very loose in the skeg box, may be here is something to win.
As expected the Amarok tracked very well, it is a real keel boat. It does remind me of the Baidarka. Edging is not very effective: no way you can control the Amarok as you can the Shadow. A stern rudder seems the only thing that really works. It is strange to paddle such a short boat that is actually less maneuverable than the long Skarabee.
There were no real waves but sometimes I got the impression the Amarok wanted to surf on small waves. I am curious about paddling her in more exciting weather soon.
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