Mid Hammer and stuffing up the line
Boof off the top
OK.... so as a few of you know I've recently changed sponsor... the reasons for that I'm not going to discuss on here but to say the least I wasn't unhappy with the dragorossi boats. I was happy paddling them for quite some time and they fitted my requirements.
However all things have to change and when the offer came through from Necky it made a lot of sense to switch. Having paddled their vibe, chronic and orbit fish play boats I knew the boats pretty well, the problem was my limited knowledge of the crux... I had paddled the older design (the blunt) but the crux was a bit of an untested venture for me.
As you can imagine I was quite exited to take it out as soon as the man in the van dropped it off :)
There was bugger all water in the rivers so I rushed myself to the nearest artificial WW course (tees barrage). The boat responded really well and certainly didn't let its short length (well... much shorter than the critical mass) hold it back in anyway. The hull was certainly very responsive and half an hour of flat spins and blunts proved to me that it could work its way around (and out of) a hole as well.
The last thing for me to test was the "boofability" factor.. I wanted to know how well the boat went off drops (and how much it would save me if I cocked up the line)... My local drop was picked as the test point and once the police divers had moved on I was able to have about 6 runs down... on each run the boat felt comfortable and responsive.
all in all I'm happy :) change can be a good thing!
