So, there’s a range of playful river boats available in the Pyranha range and in offerings from other companies, almost to the point where it could get confusing. Nine-foot half slice, short half slice, full slice, bulked up half slice (anything with ‘puffy’ as the description), and long slice can all be considered playful riverboats and have their place. Do you need all of them? Probably not… Is there anything wrong with owning all of them as an extended fleet? Absolutely not! This isn’t a ‘how to choose the right river play boat’; for that, I say think about what you want to do and match the kayak to that. This is why, as a white water kayak coach, I leant towards the Ripper 2 as my boat of choice (because it’s ace, read no further).
To make me sound old, ‘back in the day’, we had our riverboats, and that was that; no messing, one boat did it all. As things changed and freestyle boats changed what was achievable on features like waves and stoppers, all of a sudden a couple of boats were required (actually lots of things got paddled in play boats as they were the in thing, looking back now it makes my palms sweat!!), a play boat and a creek boat. Hopefully, this isn’t putting you to sleep. To make a long and geeky story short, creek boats got bigger, freestyle boats got smaller, and the in-between blurred away. The in-between being the bit that has drawn many people to the river, paddling the odd challenging rapid, surfing waves, and doing eddy-line moves like cartwheels and tail squirts (I can point you in the direction of an instructional video or two if you like). Personally, I was extremely pleased when the ‘river play’ craft began being popular again, and yes, there are parallels to be made with their predecessors like the Blade, Acro 270 and 275, or the illusive ProZone, but if you have a modern creek boat, these will feel very different; this is where the new line up comes in.
I was lucky enough to be able to paddle the available fleet of river playboats from Pyranha during the filming with Online White Water, which included the Ripper 2 Large, Ozone Large, and Firecracker 252, and I enjoyed paddling all of them to the point where choosing my personal boat became tricky. I know, “What a hardship!”. The Ozone was easy to throw into eddy-line moves like cartwheels, and it wanted to surf, spin, and blunt all day long; however, carrying all the equipment needed for me to use it as a coaching boat would be tricky. The Firecracker has the room to carry kit, the hull surfs very well, and the shorter length makes throwing it around really easy (I was very close with the Firecracker). For me, its downside was its ‘top end’. In the right hands, this boat could be comfortably paddled down grades four and five, but it might not give the right message at this grade; you can see why this was a close contender for ‘my boat’. Due to its length, it occasionally felt slow, especially if I was paddling with someone in a nine-foot riverboat.
From ‘first float’, I felt happy in the Ripper 2; good hull speed, nice edge to edge, and plenty of rocker to help you get over waves and stoppers, these were the stand out features that made me lean toward this boat over the others and use it as my day-to-day coaching boat. Ok, eddy-line cartwheels, spins, and blunts are going to be harder in this boat (not impossible), and its length will make it a bit harder to throw around than the Firecracker, but tailies in a nine-foot half-slice look amazing! I’ve sized up; at 85kg, I could paddle the medium. However, the large meant that I could get all the necessary coaching equipment into it without affecting the boat’s performance, and it handles some of the harder grades easily, as well as being loads of fun on the easier stuff. As a coaching boat, I like it because it’s not downplaying any rivers for people (“It’s easy, I can get down this in a full-slice!”), is a touch more manoeuvrable than a creek boat, and can be used as a great tool to coach edges; I’ve put people into half slices when their no slice isn’t giving edge work feedback on the easier rivers.
It’s a fairly bold statement, but I don’t think that the half-slice is a bad learning boat either, there’s a generation of paddler (possibly in their forties now) that would have learnt in a half-slice, and the edge control is evident; not only that, the slicey tail will give feedback on the river way before a no slice would, meaning more and more people are getting this ‘feedback’ in tougher environments resulting in not nice swims.
For the right paddler, there is the potential for the Ripper 2 to become the only boat due to its versatility; the same could easily be said for the Firecracker. As a boat to complement the rest of the fleet, I would have probably gone for the Firecracker, and it is a close call. If you’re thinking along the same lines, then get talking to people, try boats out, talk to your local paddling shop, and hang fire with your hard-earned cash until you’ve made your decision.
Now that I’ve said all this, it’s Ripper 2 all the way!