Paddling tips, tricks, news and gear reviews from an Unsponsored point of view

Old School Boats For New School Boaters Part II

Welcome to Part II of looking at old schools boats for new school boaters. We had a great deal of interest in the first part we released a while back. You can check out Part I here.

Old School Boats For New School Boaters Part II
Old School Boats For New School Boaters Part II

Just to make it clear old school is relative, for some of you out there it may be a blast all the way back to 2010! As a reminder for this journey back in time we are going back to the 1990s and early 2000s.

So lets say you were in the market for an old school slicey kayak to rip it up with the new crop of slicey kayaks currently being developed. Or you are silly bored with the bobby high volume short length playboats of late and just want something different.

What could you go for?

Here are a few of our own suggestions.

Again no particular order…..

Dagger Ego/Super Ego

Capable of both river play and a bit of freestyle the Super Ego has a super loose hull. Hailing from 2001 the Super Ego wasn’t around for very long but they were produced in relatively large numbers and should be pretty easy to get hold of 2nd hand. It’s smaller brother the Ego was designed for the smaller paddler.

Necky Gliss

The Gliss was around roughly at the same time as the Riot Glide and I owned one of each. Often swapping from one to another if at the local park and play spot. With its planing hull and long water line the Gliss was pretty fast in its day. Super simple outfitting and solid plastic ment that it was easy to setup and could take a bashing. The Gliss was probably one of my favourite boats for surfing.

The Necky Gliss is one of the nicest all round boats I have ever paddled. It goes well on flat water, tracks well and has reasonable speed without the bow plough. On the wave the gliss handles very well, it is well balanced and has a good combination of speed and spinability.

A bigger water creek version named the Bliss had a much higher volume but similar hull.

Eskimo Kendo

There have been a few slightly different designs of the Kendo over the years but all were made from Eskimo’s bombproof HTTP blow moulded plastics. The Kendo is pretty versatile boat. The Mark I can be identified by its Samurai inspired deck graphics.

Savage Fury

A kayak that broke the mould. A lot of the features found on the Corran Addison designed Fury could be found on many boats that followed the revolutionary 1996 Fury design.

Riot 007

1998 was the year the Riot 007 hit the water, a super flat hulled 220cm long playboat.

At just over 6ft 2″ I could squeeze into the 007. A great fun boat that could give you a good kicking if you dropped an edge.

1 Comment

  1. Phil

    Got my Ego from new and still paddle it up to grade 4+. Love it so much that I’ve got a spare one too!

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