 What's a V10E you might ask? According to Epic, it's E for Elite, but it may as well be E for Extreme - as in extreme lightness and stiffness of construction.
The Epic website says that the skis were built with "super-lightweight unidirectional carbon pre-preg combined with Nomex honeycomb, with a very thin, clear gel coat". The result? An 8kg V10. There are two of the boats in existence with a single V10L which, according to Oscar Chalupsky, is close to 7.5kg.
V10E(xpensive!)
The
proposed price is US$6,500 a copy.
Epic say they're not expecting to sell them in great
quantities...
 V10E (Photo: Epic Kayaks)
Oscar
Chalupsky will paddle one of the skis in the Molokai Challenge next month. Will it help him to a 12th victory? Oscar says that Mark Sandvold, Epic's agent
in Hawaii has
been raving about the ski. "Mark says
he's paddling over 1mph faster," said Oscar, "but I'm not sure as the computer
models don't predict that much improvement in speed."
 Looks as though Oscar lost his razor... (Photo: Epic Kayaks)
Oscar did
say that the boats are extremely stiff.
"The V10Ultra deflects about 7mm in our 20kg load test," he said. "The V10E deflects just 3.4mm".
Competition heats up
This year's
Molokai sees a significant increase in the
number of overseas competitors attending the race. A strong contingent from South Africa includes Dawid Mocke
who has beaten Oscar every time they've met in the last year. Big downwind conditions are Oscar's forte,
however, and Dawid has a reputation for being more of a flat water man.
Oscar has
been training with a group other elite paddlers including Bevan Manson, Clint
Pretorius, Hank McGregor and Darryl Bartho off the Kwa-Zulu Natal coast in South Africa where the autumn
conditions have been ideal, 50 or 60km downwind runs being the norm. Dawid trains mostly on his own in Cape Town where the
conditions are very different. In order
to achieve distance, Dawid has been resorting to paddling multiple short runs,
recently completing six of the notorious Millers Runs one after the other.
Adding to
Dawid's difficulties he's recently been struck down with tick-bite fever which
has taking him out of training altogether for a few days. He'll be travelling up to Durban
to put the finishing touches to his campaign before heading over to Hawaii.
With
current Molokai champion Clint Pretorius keen to repeat last year's victory, an
amped Oscar on a V10E, up and coming Bevan Manson, current SA champion Hank McGregor, a Dawid Mocke keen to scotch
his flat-water-paddler reputation for once and for all, not to mention
challenges from other South African, Australian, Tahitian and Hawaiian paddlers, this year's Molokai
looks like a humdinger.
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