4.4 mph is not slow to maintain over longer distances.
For a recreational paddler looking at buying a new boat a lot of sales people will try to convince the buyer they need a sleeker, longer, more expensive boat, but the Speed-Drag-HP article shows that a much less expensive, wide, plastic boat can be just as (or more) efficient up to about 4.5 mph. Thus my sharing these articles to help put the info out there where potential boat shoppers might find them and become more informed.
I’m all about promoting paddling and helping break down barriers of entry to the activity/ sport. I wasn’t disagreeing with anything posted by anyone else, but just sharing modeling research to contribute to the collection of answers to the OP’s question.
The boat and paddler you describe above is not coming anywhere close to maintaining 4.5 mph over hours.
700 dollars for kayak above. You need not spend a lot of money for a performance oriented composite hull. People need to pick their kayak for their application whether it is plastic, short, wide, long, fast or slow. Sales people may tell you anything to sell a kayak. Good ones will sell you what suits your needs.
Cruising speeds are in a short range for most kayaks. So 2.5 to 3 mph is a big difference. I think people think what’s a half a mph 
. People need to think of it as a percentage increase.
Another data point is rowing shells. A typical single scull is 27 feet long and maybe 18 inches beam at waterline, disobeying any 20:1 hull length rule. Boats can’t weight less than 31 lbs. Record 1 hour distance is 10.9 miles which gives you an idea of the speeds involved.
Rowing competition has been fierce for hundreds of years. For example a quarter million people turn out annually to watch “The Boat Race” between Cambridge and Oxford. Seems to me that competitors would have gone to extreme lengths to optimize hulls of all classes long ago, including towing tests, so that by now they are as ideal as they can get.
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More like 10" at the waterline for a single. Those beasties are super skinny. I rowed for many years before switching to sea kayaks.
So 32:1 hull length ratio. Can’t imagine what its like trying to stay upright on 10 inches!
a couple of terms that seem fit for these ‘missiles’
When paddling through ‘the cut’ in Seattle (pre-dawn, to work), these guys would sneak up on me, obviously looking the other way.
I would really have to be aware of them.
Where I am now (paddling St Johns), they typically don’t row in the dark, and, the river is big enough to avoid them.
It takes a lot of practice. You don’t learn how to row in a racing shell, everyone starts in a “trainer” that is much shorter and wider. Alden Ocean Shell or something similar. The oars, which are 9.5 feet long, act as outriggers since the oars are captive in the oarlocks. And much like a bike, you gain stability by moving. You balance the boat with the relative positions of your hands, not with your knees. A habit I had to un-learn when I switched to sea kayaks, although even a skinny sea kayak seems crazy stable in comparison!
But the immediate acceleration upon application of power is really cool. There is just no noticeable resistance at all.
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@alish I really enjoyed reading the content that you posted. Thank you. In my experience there are analogies in the canoe world to “longer is not always better” and the efficiency and effectiveness of optimizing boat size to paddler. For example in the Northstar line the Trillium 14’6" solo is an exceptionally hot boat compared to it’s 15’6" larger brother. Lots and lots of other examples where a strong paddler in a low/medium volume boat with low wetted surface area may easily outrun everything but a much faster boat with a much stronger paddler. And in the canoe world some of the hotter lower volume hulls (with L/W of 7 or a little better) can be driven a bit past their theoretical hull speeds relatively easily; I don’t know if that’s true in the kayak world.