{"id":24629,"date":"2026-01-06T11:41:26","date_gmt":"2026-01-06T10:41:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pyranha.com\/blog\/?p=24629"},"modified":"2026-01-06T11:41:27","modified_gmt":"2026-01-06T10:41:27","slug":"first-thoughts-in-the-pyranha-firecracker-242","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pyranha.com\/blog\/first-thoughts-in-the-pyranha-firecracker-242\/","title":{"rendered":"First thoughts in the Pyranha Firecracker 242"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Having finished my summer internship, the first thing I wanted to do when getting back to university was to go paddling. I\u2019d bought an ex-demo Firecracker 242<\/a> over the holiday with the internship money (perhaps slightly impulsively \u2013 but how often do you see purple and blue boats?) and was incredibly eager to take it out during Freshers\u2019 week. Fortunately, as the Training & Development Officer for the club this year, I was able to organise a trip to North Wales; I was excited to run the classic Dee section to Town Falls on this level as I had only run it once before on ~0.6m \u2013 this time it was on 1.3m (not quite \u2018Deebezi\u2019 though).<\/p>\n\n\n

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Immediately, from the get on I felt the difference between the new Firecracker and my old boat, a Dagger Axiom 8.5. The Axiom was a brilliant boat to develop my skills in and was a sensible upgrade from the club Dagger GTs, but having taken it to the Alps earlier this year, I felt I had reached the skill ceiling of the boat, wanting something with a lot more play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Boy, did I get what I bargained for. The Firecracker felt a bit like an unruly teenager at times, leaving me feeling a little like a bull rider. I really enjoy how the boat handles even in aggressive waves. One thing I loved about the Axiom was its agility, and the Firecracker is even snappier. It\u2019s incredibly nimble, and whilst being slower than the Ripper, it still builds enough speed to punch through most features. Having briefly demoed a\u00a0Ripper 1<\/a>\u00a0in the Alps, I found it a bit lumbering and hard to manoeuvre, whereas the Firecracker is\u00a0the opposite and suits my fast paddling style very well.<\/p>\n\n\n

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In a weird sense, I\u2019m somewhat glad I didn\u2019t have the chance to demo the Firecracker, as I\u2019m not sure I would\u2019ve enjoyed it. As I hadn\u2019t paddled in some time, and not on a 1.3m Dee before, my first trip was a bit chaotic, with a lot of rolls \u2013 the Firecracker is one of the easiest boats I\u2019ve paddled to roll \u2013 and I was slightly questioning whether I\u2019d been a bit overconfident with a smaller boat and should have bought a Ripper 2<\/a> instead. But despite probably spending more time underwater than above, I began to understand the Firecracker more and more throughout the day and got some glimpses of what it\u2019d be capable of once I\u2019ve become accustomed to it. (Also, most of our club members own Rippers, so I couldn\u2019t be part of the sheep flock).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the weekend, I made some outfitting adjustments; moving the seat forward and also raising the backband. This would be my only major complaint about the boat; the Stout 2 outfitting is not friendly to adjust! It does seem like this has been improved with the newer Elite outfitting<\/a>, however.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since these slight changes, I\u2019ve taken the Firecracker on many trips, on the Usk, Dart Loop and to CIWW. Every trip is an absolute thrill, with surfing and tailees incredibly good fun and super easy to initiate. Once my December exams are complete, there\u2019s no doubt I\u2019ll be heading back out to try some river tricks (googling \u2018kayak cartwheel beginner easy\u2019 right now). This boat is absolutely perfect for me, as someone who loves play laps of Grade 3 and wants to further develop my brief experience of 4 without sacrificing the fun. A great boat on this grade, making even mundane sections (if there even is such a thing on whitewater) a great time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ll have to get a few laps in before gaining too much weight at Christmas roasts \u2013 I\u2019m already nearing the top of the weight range at 85kg!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Freddy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Having finished my summer internship, the first thing I wanted to do when getting back to university was to go paddling. I\u2019d bought an ex-demo Firecracker 242 over the holiday with the internship money and was incredibly eager to take it out during Freshers\u2019 week…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8939,"featured_media":24631,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[1810,1811,1623],"class_list":["post-24629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tests-and-reveiws","tag-firecracker-242","tag-halfsizehalfslice","tag-pyranha-firecracker-review"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.pyranha.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/WhatsApp-Image-2025-12-26-at-12.53.26-2.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9tk9G-6pf","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pyranha.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pyranha.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pyranha.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pyranha.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8939"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pyranha.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24629"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.pyranha.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24629\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24636,"href":"https:\/\/www.pyranha.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24629\/revisions\/24636"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pyranha.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pyranha.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pyranha.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pyranha.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}