Dancer, RPM, etc
You can probably find a Dancer with skirt for $50 if you look around, though they’re starting to disappear from the market as more of them succumb to age/brittleness. With a tiny (by modern standards) cockpit and narrow, rounded hull, a Dancer is probably the closest approximation to a sea kayak - very log-like and easy to roll. Certainly the few sea kayaks I’ve been in rolled a lot like a Dancer.
If you want easy, the RPM is probably the easiest rolling boat ever made, but that’s not necessarily a good thing. It’ll let you come up with some seriously flawed technique, especially in the calm of a pool. That can translate to a very unreliable roll in conditions or if you get in a less forgiving boat.
Part of the trick may be that in a very
short ww kayak, any misdirected rolling effort may be wasted just in causing the upside down boat to hump toward its bow or stern.
In a sea kayak, the length will help channel misdirected effort into rotation. Same applies in longer ww kayaks like the Piedra or my Animas.
Early on, “new school” designers were focused on how their designs would play or surf, and not on how they rolled. Now, companies like Jackson swear that their designs are all made and tested to roll easily.
Fortunately, most ww kayaks can be optimized for their intended roles, and optimized for your intended rolls.
Have heard that from Jackson owners
… that Jackson has gotten ease of rolling back into the newer designs, especially the river running/play boats. I am not sure that is true of some of the play boats from other manufacturers. I know a couple of reliable rollers in both sea and WW who took a class in spring conditions on the Hudson in new play boats from a major manufacturer a couple of years ago. They both came back indicating that rolling the boats was much more difficult once they got at all fatigued. One bought a boat, the other decided they did not need to try and relive their 20’s.
flat pancake
I’m curious. Can you remember the name that flat pancake WW boat?
We asked for forgivness not permiss.
Not by now
The young man was a terribly good WW paddler as was his father, who the boat might have started with years ago. That means it had had dueled with many rocks. Even if the name had been evident at some point, it wasn’t by then.
They change designs so fast with WW boats, it’d be a ton of digging to even get to an image. Probably the only way to spot it would be for me to stand at the take out of the West, on the one day they run it now, and look at each boat as the history of WW paddling gets pulled onto the bank.
Liquidlogic Lil Joe
I ended up getting a used Liquidlogic Lil Joe - it is in good condition and the cockpit fits me nicely. Going to add some foam for the hips and get a new skirt, the one it came with is a 2 man job together on, but I think I will have a lot of fun in it. Going to the pool this evening and hope to get it out in the surf as soon as I get the new skirt.
Congrats!