red7

Bling Special…  This ski turns heads on the beach – and is one of the nicest boats I’ve ever paddled.  

How about a ski made out of recyclable "green" material?  How about a 12.5kg ski that costs about 30% less than the equivalent in carbon, but with comparable stiffness?  No, it's not April 1!

Red7 recently sent us one of their new Surf70 Pro skis to try out.  I've found it a fast boat with exceptionally good downwind characteristics.  After paddling it in two races and about fifteen downwind runs (some in extreme conditions) here's my view from the cockpit...

The Red7 Surf70 Pro in action on a recent Millers Run

Red7 brought the first examples of an all-new surf ski design to Durban for the 2007 ARB World Cup.  Red7 CEO Peter Mote asked me not to take any photos as the skis were not production grade... 

But I received a selection of images via email today - the secret is out!  Here they are along with some video shot of Tommy Woodruff paddling the ski in Durban.

Through the magic of Skype I caught up with Oscar Chalupsky a few days ago. He’s in China at the new factory where the Epic V10 is manufactured and has been inspecting and testing the first production skis.

 

Oscar is combining the testing with training for the Molokai Challenge – surely the first time an athlete has trained for this event on a tidal river (the Fuchun River) in South East China!

Exciting times are with us...

 

I've been talking to a number of manufacturers (Epic, Fenn, Red 7, Knysna Kayaks) and it seems that there's a wave of new model skis just around the corner.

 

Look out for articles on each of these manufacturers in the coming weeks, here's a snippet on each of them...

 

The Custom Kayaks Icon surf ski is a relative newcomer to the market having been in production since early 2004.

The fundamental characteristics are:

• Length: 6.42m (21ft)
• Construction: glassfibre sandwich or composite carbon/glassfibre
• Weight (glassfibre, average): 15kg