Kayaking, like any other sport, has its fashions and fads. Is the half slice kayak the latest victim of fashion?
When Corran Addison announced a creek boat that had a tail that was slicey enough for dip turns, but not for getting totally vertical or for general play, I predicted it would set off a whole new genre of river boat. It seems I was right, and now we have boats such as the Zet Ninja, the Lettemann Horny Potato, and now the forthcoming Pyranha ReactR. Dagger, too, have a similar concept in development at the moment as well.
So, where does this leave the humble half slice such as the Rippers, Firecrackers and Antix of this world? When the Ripper first came onto the scene, most people associated half slices with boats you generally took on class 3. The idea of taking one on a serious steep creek run or through big holes wasn’t something modern boaters were looking at outside of some of the top paddlers novelty taking out an RPM down a big run on occasion.
Regardless of what the real capabilities of previous half slices were, The Ripper changed people’s perceptions of what a half slice could do. Perception is everything. Here was a boat that was fast, could skip out of drops and carry speed through big features, yet could offer play for days on eddy lines and rock splats. The original Ripper was truly a quiver killer, or at least so we thought. And yes, I know Liquid Logic released the Mullet a long time previously, but it never really caught the imagination in the same way as the Ripper, likely due to its more rounded hull, and the fact it was harder to get hold of and demo around the world. It probably also helped that the Ripper had Bren Orton on promo duty for the boat, while the Mullet, well, err, let’s not go down that rabbit hole.
The half slice world quickly reached top gear, with manufacturers scrambling to release their own take on the concept. There was the Jackson Antix and now Antix 2.0, the Exo Rexy and Zion Slalom, the Dagger Rewind, Ripper 2 and a whole lot more besides. We now have short half slices, of which the Antix 2.0 could take its place along with the Pyranha Firecracker.
Half slice… fun?
All of those boats are excellent designs in their own way and they have proven extremely popular. Gone are the days when most people owned a creek boat as their primary machine. These days, the half slice is king of the quiver, but there’s a problem that doesn’t get talked about much. A lot of people own half slices, but they rarely ever use that tail for play and getting vertical or spinning around. Add to that, there are also groups of people who don’t see the point of the half slice, and instead just go for full slice boats if they want a day of messing around.
So, now we have the introduction of the slicey tailed creek boat. Effectively, this is a full volume creek boat with just enough slice at the end of the tail to allow for stern dip turns and tail loaded boofs etc. Not a play machine, but a boat that’s designed for manoeuvrability, speed, and maybe down river moves like kick flips. It’s a full on creek boat that allows the kayaker to take some of the dynamic paddling style of a half slice into a different realm without the concern about getting back looped in big holes. The question is, is it too niche?
My prediction is that the slicey creek boat will very likely take over from true full volume creek boats in terms of filling that quiver space. Paddling style today is much more dynamic than it was even ten years ago, or even five years ago. At one time a boof was a way to get your boat’s nose up and over features or to skip out of drops. Nowadays, even every day boaters are using boof technique as a statement of style, not just a practical tool, and a lot of that comes from how the popularity of modern half slice designs opened things up.
Most boaters would agree that when they switch between boats in their quiver, they don’t really want to have to spend time having to acclimatise each time and to modify their paddling style. It’s one reason I bought a Ripper 2, because I found my Party Rexy was just too different to the freestyle boat I spend most of my time in these days. I could have gone the whole hog and bought a Firecracker, a boat I really did like when I tried one. But I wanted a longer, faster boat, hence the Ripper 2.
If I was to start over, however, with the oncoming release of more dynamic creek boats, I think it’s possibly fair to say that owning a freestyle boat or a full slice, a short half slice like the Antix 2.0 or Firecracker, and then a boat like the ReactR would cover pretty much every base for most people who are running rivers. We’re back, then, to the idea of three boats being the sweet spot of kayak ownership (yes, I know there are kayak hoarders out there who don’t think in terms of maximum numbers!)
I’ll be interested to hear what you think. Will you be looking at getting a ReactR or the new Dagger boat when it’s released? What’s your reasoning?
The Kayaking Journal 
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