WaveWalk Kayaks: New Sea Kayaking and Touring Solutions

NEW: A sea kayaker's review of her W kayak

U.S. Pat #6871608

W Sea Kayaking and Touring

What makes the W a high performance sea kayak?

-Click to watch video

The W offers you many advantages over the traditional touring kayaks:

1. Friendliness from step one - easiest to get into and out of: Just step into the cockpit when you're launching, and out of it when you're beaching. Forget the complex gymnastics required just to get into the cockpit of and ordinary touring kayak, and the awkward maneuvers required to come out of it.

2. Never step in water again: You can enter the cockpit from the back and exit it from the front, and always step on dry land. When beaching you can make your W go higher on land than a traditional kayak would if you sit or stand in the back of the cockpit and thus raise its bow.

3. Best mobility - launch, paddle and go anywhere: You can launch the W practically anywhere, go where no other kayak can, and beach it in spots that don't fit any other kayak. The surf becomes a fun place, shallow water and ice are no longer a threat, and many more launching and beaching spots are at your disposition. More than just touring - the W is a true exploration kayak.

4. Best ergonomics and comfort - forget leg numbness and back pains: You don't paddle the W in the traditional L kayaking position, which is already a good thing, and you can switch anytime you want between four ergonomic positions (sitting, standing, riding and kneeling), and additional, intermediary positions. With the new ability to reduce fatigue, physical impact and long term injuries you're likely to enjoy your kayaking trips more than before.

5. Best protection - stay dry and cozy: Unlike ordinary touring kayaks the W protects you with 14" of freeboard, which is helpful against side waves and wind. Additionally, when you launch it in the surf you can raise its bow by sitting in the back of the cockpit and thus go over the frontal waves instead of through them.

6. Best balance and natural, powerful leg control: The twinhull, catamaran design offers maximal lateral stability, while your legs can play their natural role in full - balancing the boat and supporting your paddling effort.

7. Best tracking and effortless, rudderless steering: Forget about rudders - the W kayak has two lean, straight, parallel hulls that make it track like a catamaran (I.E. better than a monohull), and for steering you just lean it into the turn as you do with a bike - and forget about rudders forever.

8. Biggest and driest accessible storage space: Forget about tying gear on top of your kayak with bungee cords just to find that it's destabilizing you and getting wet, forget about leaking hatches whose content is unreachable while you're on the water. The W offers you 10 cubic feet of dry and accessible storage space in the cockpit and hulls - more than any expedition kayak does.

9. Get some company onboard: If you're not a heavy person the W kayak offers you the option to paddle in tandem with another lightweight person, or take a passenger with you onboard.

10. Highest versatility: Touring can include flat water one day, a fast river the next day, and a day trip in the ocean the third day, including surf launching. There is absolutely no reason why you shouldn't be able to use the same boat during these three days, yet the W is the only touring kayak that performs well in all these environments and applications.

11. Reliability: When launching, paddling and beaching you want your kayak to resist impact and abrasion, especially in cold water and weather, when all plastic materials including fiberglass and carbon fiber composites become more brittle and vulnerable. The W kayak is roto-molded form High Density Polyethylene (HDPE) - a polymer that has become synonym to durability.

12. An outstanding experience: Try to imagine the Winter Olympics after all sports involving the standing position have been removed from it (E.G. alpine skiing, snowboarding, cross country skiing etc...) It hardly seems possible, isn't it? If you succeed in imagining such a thing you're likely to start realizing how fun and exciting it is to paddle standing in full confidence down a scenic river or on a beautiful lake, as well as at sea. In order to better understand what it means you should picture yourself going down a snow covered slope - first sitting on a sled and the second time standing on skis...
Well - get it?...

13. Simple and easy: Freedom and fun are the essence of what touring and sea kayaking should be in our opinion, and we've created a boat that offers you the means to enjoy these activities without the complications, inadequacies and oddities imposed on you by old fashioned kayaks.
The W kayak delivers an overall better touring and sea kayaking experience than traditional sea kayaks do.

14. Speed and seaworthiness: Although the W is only 10 ft (3 meters) long due to its slim twin hulls it is as fast as a 12-13 ft long traditional touring kayak, and it is more seaworthy.

Enough said for now - how about watching some of our demo movies?

More food for thought:

Sea Kayaking and touring with a twinhull kayak?
Naturally - Polynesians have roamed the vast Pacific and Indian Oceans with their catamarans and outrigger canoes for millennia.

What about the Eskimo roll?
What about it? Do you trust your roll enough to go surf playing with your kayak? Well, if you do think again.

Related Articles:

Article in the Gear Review section of Paddler Magazine:
"It is simple to shift positions on the fly and sit, stand, or kneel anywhere along the 54-inch-long bench seat. This ability to easily shift weight and position is especially important in turning the Wavewalk. Shift a hip or thigh, or offset a foot pressure to push down on one hull, and the Wavewalk will curve into the turn. Even a standing turn can be performed with solid stability.
The Wavewalk is a design unlike any we've paddled before. The more confident we became in the Wavewalk, the more possibilities opened up. We're still exploring and still learning. And that's part of the fun." See: Reviews
'OFF THE WALL' - By Mike McCrea. Paddler Magazine, Official Magazine of the ACA (American Canoe Association), 07-08/2007

Story and boat review in WaveLength Magazine:
"This is a boat designed and constructed to liberate a paddler from concerns about paddling form, good technique, expeditions, navigation, rescue ops or one’s rank in the pecking order of local paddling hotshots."... -"This is a craft designed for fun, for simplicity of trips, and even, as the craft’s site shows, for surfing three to four-footers." See: Reviews
Adam Bolonsky - WaveLength Magazine 08/2005