The Future of Kayak Design
Once upon a time kayak buyers were faced with a simple question - which type of wood? Look around a kayak store today and it is a whole different story. Plastics, composites, fabrics and yes, even now, wood. And it doesn't end with materials,
there's the designs as well. You want something fast? No problem. Stable? No worries. You want something you can surf in? We've got it covered.It's a brave new world for paddlers. But what about tomorrow? What does the future hold for us paddlers and what might the boats of the future be like? Kayak submersed itself in the depths of industrial material innovation to find some answers.
The clues to tomorrow reside in today.
In recent years we've seen the onset of two major trends, especially in the high end sea kayak market: glass fibre and Kevlar. Together, these material blends are known as "composites". Why are composites chosen? Because they combine with rigidity and lightness. This means greater efficiency out on the water. P&H Sea Kayaks uses a mixture of glass fibre and Diolen fabric on some of its boats. The glass fibre gives it weight benefits and rigidity while the Diolen offers resistance to heavy impact or tear pressure. The firm uses the fabric to reinforce key stress areas.
At Necky Kayaks, designers have created the advance composite (AC) option in which fibreglass material is layered with a core added in specific areas to bolster stiffness.
As for Kevlar and carbon fibre, these materials
were pretty much ubiquitous in the K1 Kayak races at the Beijing Olympic Games. The aramid fibre Kevlar was invented by DuPont during its research into liquid crystalline polymers. Brian Foy, DuPont's product design and development manager says: "Its natural toughness allows fabrics and threads to stand up to repeated abuse. "Kevlar helps minimizes vibration transfer and can sustain deformation without breaking. And because its ductility prevents it from shattering or suffering the kind of catastrophic failure so common in carbon composites and fiberglass, it is safer and more reliable in high-impact situations."
On boats using carbon and Kevlar, the hulls tend to be made of Kevlar and carbon combined with a glass fibre and glass cloth deck with key stress areas reinforced with Kevlar. This gives pretty much the ultimate weight/strength ratio. But ultimate performance comes at a cost - if you damage your carbon/Kevlar boat, it is going to be very difficult, not to mention expensive, to repair. However, the cost of Kevlar might well come down in years to come because of money invested by DuPont in expanding production capacity at a number of its plants. The more produced, the lower the cost, or so the model tends to run.
Nimbus Kayaks has been experimenting at the forefront of boat design for years now. The firm has created a prototype of its Cygnet model using resin infusion with a very thin gelcoat layer, then carbon fibre, a 2mm core, and another layer of carbon fibre. The composite weight was just 23lbs with a finished weight of 33.4lbs. The maker is doing test laminates of its latest breakthrough checking for toughness and durability.
At the less expensive end of the market, RTM is using a new material called Triatex which, when mixed with traditional moulding and epoxy resin, gives a 30 per cent increase in strength over traditional moulded plastic boats. It is also lighter.
Meanwhile, Robson Kayaks is producing a number of its kayaks and canoes with a new boat-building substance called Armerlite, which is a woven mix of fibreglass and plastic.In the immediate future, kayak makers are likely to continue experimenting with the range andmixes of currently existing materials, fibres and coatings, constantly searching for greater strength, lower weight, better UV protection, longer durability and greater efficiency through the water. To do this, the kayak makers will continue to keep their eyes on the aerospace and yacht industries.
But what can we expect in the longer term?
For this we have to look, like the kayak manufacturers themselves, to the world of aerospace technologies.
NASA is pumping $3 million each year into the Princeton-led Institute for Biologically Inspired Materials. The Institute will be investigating and designing materials that mimic the types of self-repairing substances found in nature (e.g bones and sea shells).
"Our goal is to bring more 'smart functions into spacecraft materials," said Ilhan Aksay, Princeton professor of chemical engineering. "Some of these functions already exist in biology."
Much of the institute's work is focused on making innovative composites of organic and inorganic compounds. The institute's Holy Grail, it seems, is two-fold. Firstly to coax raw materials into assembling themselves into microscopic structures which can repair itself on command and secondly to develop advanced materials capable of changing shape according to requirements - such as an aeroplane wings.
The possibilities in terms of kayak design then might include a kayak that self-repairs and can change itself depending on the prevalent water conditions (a fattening of the hull, perhaps, when the water gets choppy? Or a boat that can stretch from white water to tourer depending on whether its in fresh or saltwater?).
Possibly. Or possibly our concerns for the environment might become the single dominating factor in the future of kayak design. Already, we are seeing builders using recycled offcuts to build their boats. Necky is one such firm. Its tourer the Manitou was this year released in a recycled plastic option. Naturally it was produced in green.
Perhaps this might be extended further - you toss away your food packaging one day, you paddle in it the next. And as we discover new ways of using recycled products, so perhaps the potentials of building boats from reclaimed materials will grow.
And as we see the quickening of technological advance, perhaps, just perhaps, paddlers will get nostalgic. I'm thinking of the advent of the compact disc and the subsequent revival of vinyl. I'm thinking kayaks, and I'm thinking about wood. In a world of global warming, wood could become an increasingly rare usable resource. Indeed in the world of guitars, the best tone woods available are already scarce, or simply (and quite rightly in the case of Brazilian rosewood) unavailable through international protection.I'll wrap this up with something that caught my eye on the website of the wonderfully named Squeedunk Kayaks' website. Squeedunk is a small-scale producer in Minnesota.
It said: "Wooden boats are not for everybody. In these times of space age materials, the thought of wooden boats may sound a bit "old-fashioned". But the reality is that a lot of the good boats, not just kayaks, being built today are still wooden boats.
"New materials and new construction techniques make today's wooden boats every bit as durable and strong as any boats made of other materials. And wood boats are beautiful. Their cost is comparable to high-end composite boats. Wood boats cannot be mass produced. They are made one at a time, by hand."
The future of the kayak may indeed lay in its past.
