Kindly Old Dr. K’s Hydrosphere

It is …interesting.

I was walking to the put-in at Anglers on the Potomac when I saw Mike Mathwin and friends at the Potomac Paddlesports demo event. Lying there on the ground was the notorious Green boat. Mike suggested I take it for a spin and I was happy to oblige. Here are my impressions.

The idea of a new-school fast boat is very encouraging, as I think this is an area of boat design that’s been neglected for many years. The Green boat looks radically long by today’s standards, but it’s actually only 11 ft. 9 in, so it’s not really that big. The outfitting is very comfortable and nicely done, although I’d have to ditch the thigh braces and make something custom to fit my thunder thighs, as is true of every modern boat I’ve tried except the Jacksons.  It rolls super easy, as do most long boats. The Green is a heavy beast, massing every bit of the advertised 48 plus pounds and maybe a bit more. Not surprising for a long boat designed specifically for extreme racing, there’s a lot of plastic in there.

Coming from paddling short boats most of the time in recent years, paddling the Green is a story of acclimation. For starters it’s relatively tippy, at 24 inches wide. For slalom boaters and old school long boat paddlers this is a familiar feeling, and even long boat newbies will forget about this after a few minutes of paddling. More significant for me was the degree to which the boat is optimized for speed. I was expecting something akin to old school high volume slalom boat performance, but that’s not the Green boat. It’s surprisingly reluctant to turn for a medium length boat and requires a very determined effort to turn. I think the maneuverability on the Green owes more to wildwater boat principles than to slalom boats. Although it has a lot of rocker in the bow, the bow is v-shaped. What this means is that turning the boat requires you to lean hard to the outside of the turn to get the bow tip out of the water and then SWEEP hard to push it around.

Ferries and peel-outs require extra care for the same reason. Ferrying requires a very shallow initial angle and aggressive paddling to stay on line. If you do get off line, however, the raw speed allows you to make up for many mistakes.  The boat sna ps into eddies very nicely, with that old school crispness and dynamic feel missing from so many new boats.

It’s hard to say just how fast the boat is without a direct comparison. I’d say it’s slower than my old 4-meter glass boats like the Lettmann Mark IV, but faster than my T-Slalom. In general the handling characteristics reminded me most of some of the old touring boats like the Franconia or the Phoenix Isere. The Green is slower than these boats but has much better characteristics for steep whitewater, with the upturned bow presumably designed to allow faster resurfacing and such. Creeking and creek racing are not my bag so I wasn’t able to give the boat a fair test of its true purpose. I paddled it hard downriver from the Center Chute and it was a good ride, slicing through the waves nicely and gliding over the swirlies at the rock wall like they weren’t there.  After I gave back the Green boat I hopped in my Super Star and felt like I had taken off ankle weights.

That was my half-hour in the Green boat. You should definitely try it out if you get a chance, and it might be just what you’re looking for. I only wish they made it in a glass 25-lb version.