Surfski Knowledge Base

flypaddle
06/18/08 #4527

Hey Gang,

Yesterday, I had a few meeting's scheduled with some contractors in Westport (which is on the coast for those of you that don't know), so I opted to barrel down the freeway with the V10L strapped to the car for some surfskiing afterwards. Once the meetings were out of the way, I jumped on the ski, and headed into the surf. In years prior, I would have launched the boat in the more protected shoreline of Grays Harbor, and paddled around the jetty into the ocean, but due to the fact that the Coast Guard has kicked me off that stretch of water twice (long story I won't bore you with now), I now make beach launches through the surf.

Initially, the surf looked fairly small, but then the water always looks calmer from shore than in the water. I had made it through the first 4 sets of breakers that were approx. 3-4 feet tall. The last set was probably about a 5 foot tall breaker. I tried to time this wave so that it wouldn't break on my chest, but that didn't work. Before I knew it, I was looking up a wall of water that had just started to break above me. Once I recovered, and remounted from being knocked off my boat, I still had to make it past this set. This time I decided to be more aggresive and continue padling no matter how big that wall looks. That worked fine, and this time I had made it through unscathed… or so I thought.

After getting through all the breakers, I noticed my boat wasn't responding like it should. It felt like I had no rudder response what so ever. Since the boat was still fairly manageable heading into the waves, I decided to go out about a mile off shore (since that's were the waves are bit consistant) and jump out to take a look at why I had no rudder response. It turns out that the rudder had just fallen out, and sank to the bottom. I have always reliezed that not having any pin in the assembly was a flaw in the system, but have never spent the time to correct it. Once I turned the boat around, I learned that this boat does not respond well in following seas. I finally made it back to the start of the breakers, and was wondering how I was going to get through.

I waited for what seemed like the largest wave coming in, and jumped on the back of it hoping to ride it in as far as possible. While paddling on one side as hard as I could, and leaning the boat, that got me through two sets of breakers. the next three sets I jumped out of the boat and swam into shore holding the stern so that the boat would not go broadside to the waves. All this time hoping that no one was secretly video taping me and have me show up on some Utube site. Fortunatly the ocean was fairly sedate for Westport standards (Big water for Bellingham standards), and everything worked out fine.

The next rudder that goes on this boat will have at the very least a cotter, or shear pin within the assembly to avoid this issue again. I would also recommend this to anyone that has an epic surfski with the same compression fittings. This rudder hadn't been touched since last October, and has had a lot over hours / races with it before deciding to dislodge itself here.

See you on the water,

Joost

Re: Westport mayhem
Michael Gregory
06/18/08 #4528

Yo Joost,
-Epic has recently gone back to using the pin through shaft system with the rudders.
-Epic skis are world class, that's clear when one looks over race results all over the world. However, after learning the hard way, I now know that these boats need maintenance regularly. By that I mean - check all the fittings in the steering system – foot plate, pedals, rudder lines, rudder assemby, etc. often.
-Epic warranties all the parts generously and all parts can be disassembled/reassembled. Just like a real boat!
-Oh BTW have I told you guys that the V10Sport Ultra is the best all-around surfski ever?
Best, Mike.

Another Rudder Story
Bob Putnam
06/19/08 #4532

Here in Deep Cove we have a 6 AM training group. Mon & Thurs.

Last Monday we were doing “dock sprints”. Sprint two, rest two and so on. We were reaching the last interval when Jodi ran full speed into a rock that was about 3 inches below the water. This left about 3 -4 inches of rudder smacking into the rock. The stern of her V10 Ultra lifted a foot out of the water.

We went to shore and the rudder was severely bent and had pulled from the fitting. There was a crack in the hull but the rudder had not penetrated. I was impressed by the ability of the hull to resist this impact. I had once clipped a rock on my old Millenium and the rudder buried itself into the hull causing the ski to take on water. Here the Epic hull seemed impenetrable.

Jodi is a new paddler and she is 6 ft tall so I offered to paddle her ski back to Deep Cove. We took the rudder out. Initially is seem like this would be easy but once the ski got above 8km/hr it would go into a skid which was impossible to correct. After a bit I started paddling it backwards and this was pretty good. Only 4 km to go. Paddling in reverse exercises a whole new group of muscles. After about 2 km we tried some tandem paddling but that didn't work to well.

Finally I got fed up with paddling backwards and tried going forwards again. I finally got some success by edging the ski. By anticipating the skid and leaning the boat into it or away from the direction I wanted the ski to turn I could more or less keep it going in the desired direction.

Ya, that's it.
Bob