The Crazy thing here is hull designs, also affect how the boat handles adverse conditions. directly into or directly with doesn’t affect any hull design as much as you would think it’s the quartering waves to broadsides that has the most effect.
atleast in my experience.
The hard chine of the Tsunami is less affected by conditions than the soft chine of the tempest. Even though the Tempest is a good MPH faster than the Tsunami add in some wind and waves and that evens out completely. Unless as I said you are only going directly into or with the prevailing waves.
I think for the most part I prefer the Tempest (I still need more saddle time.) for racing mostly because it turns faster and in our sprint races (3 Mile.) there’s 3-4 turns depending on how they lay the course out. and those turns can mean overtaking a boat per turn.
On the 10 mile, it really doesn’t matter which boat from the turn perspective since there’s only one turns as you are going upriver and down river, the trick here is if there is cross wind making broadside or quartering chop, then I’d prefer the Tsunami as it’s less affected by those conditions. So it winds up being more forgiving if I make an oops in my paddle stroke.
But what @Jyak says is true a 3 mile is a different set of kittens over a 10 mile race and a 10 mile is a different set of kittens over a 15 miler. And don’t get me started on a 30 mile ones, or the 90 miles ones. (I didn’t win the 90 as it was over three days and some of us have to work. So I only did the Saturday and Sunday Legs.)
I’ve won the 15 miler, several times because that’s all about energy management, and endurance conditioning and pretty much not about the boat at all. (I know blasphemy.)
I’ve outrun CurrentDesign, Epics, and Stellars in my Janky Tsunami. not because that boat was faster. They absolutely walked away from me in the first three miles. and I didn’t pass them until somewhere around mile 8-10 but that’s because I spent 9 months training to be able to paddle without stopping at a flat water effort level of 5 mph for three hours.
Of course physically it didn’t hurt that I know a bit about biology and how mine works, so going off my Metformin, a few weeks before my race, and Potassium and sugar loading just before the race allowed me to run completely off the overabundance of blood sugar for about the first hour. and then of course all the Training I did prior I knew I could run for three before being spent so I essentially had an hour buffer before that lactic threshold would prevent me from maintaining speed.
So had the guys laughing at me at the start with very expensive boats had to eat crow, because they incorrectly thought a fast boat and being a weekend warrior would win the day.
Yes the next guy in (who incidentally was a woman.) was 30 minutes behind me. And yes I was lusting over her Stellar. She wanted to know how in the heck I was able to paddle like a machine.
Training - lots of training Every Day 10-15 miles of paddling daily, and Gym training Every Monday through Friday for an hour just doing Cardio and the Rowing Machines training for this event. And She said I’m not doing that…
You just don’t paddle into a marathon and expect to win no matter how much you spent on a Kayak.
And speaking of race it’s a new year and upcoming Race Season, so Next week, 1/13 - its back to the gym for me to start getting ready for 30 minutes of race come end of August.
boats arrive in two months.
and I’m ready to go out as soon as it gets here. Hopefully 
they won’t break it.
