Liquidlogic Braaap 69

Boofing

Boofing the Braaap in the traditional sense of the word—from a creeking perspective—is extremely easy, with one caveat: it’s common for the stern to hit bottom and throw you off. The bow’s rocker makes lifting it off the water very easy, and the rounded hull slides off rocks smoothly as you take your boof stroke.

The Braaap’s stern is a mixed blessing when it comes to boofing. On the one hand, sinking the stern as you take your boof stroke (by edging a bit and making your stroke more of a sweep) allows you to really force that bow up in the air, making the elusive stern-first boof a totally attainable reality for mere mortals.

On the other hand, if you do dip the stern, it’s more prone to making contact with rocks that a surface-bound boat would not find, which can easily jar the boat and throw off your stroke at the critical moment. Even in a more traditional boof (where you don’t dip your stern), the length of the boat can cause the stern to “tap” (an understatement) the lip of the boof. This is, at best, unpleasant, and at worst, can alter your angle mid-air, causing your boof to turn into a plug.

When I reviewed the Tuna, I talked about “boofing up” in big volume whitewater, and the Braaap is another boat that encourages this technique. The roundness of the bow means that it’s possible to lift the bow onto almost any foampile. In most cases, this is great, and it’s almost always better than the alternative (plugging the feature). But the Braaap’s slim stern and generally low volume makes it more susceptible to backenders, so use with caution.

Speed

This is an interesting one, because in some ways—and especially after Pat Keller won Rey Del Rio using the Braaap—it is marketed as a racing boat. I haven’t paddled any races in mine yet, but my impressions thus far are that, yes, the boat is fast, but it isn’t the fastest boat out there, particularly on flatwater. This is for a few reasons. If you watched Gerd Serrasolses’ winning run in the recent Adidas Sickline race, you would have seen his Pyranha 9R planing onto the stern during the flatwater sprint section of the course.

While the 9R is no doubt a fast boat, that isn’t a fast thing to have happen, and it’s a result of the hull profile of the stern, something the Braaap shares. The uniform angle and flatness of the stern makes the boat plane up onto the stern when accelerating. In flatwater, this behavior bleeds speed by raising the bow out of the water and shortening the waterline dramatically. Boats with a more conventional progressive rocker in the stern suffer the same fate—in general, the less rocker, the faster on flatwater—but the sharp angle at which the stern rocker rises hurts the Braaap more than the gradual angle change of older boats.

The Braaap’s length helps make up a lot of that speed loss, but the rocker up front doesn’t help. All in all, I think it comes in a few notches down from the top of the pack for flatwater speed—in my opinion, boats like the Remix 79 and Zet’s Raptor and Director.

Whitewater is a somewhat different story. High bow rocker allows boats to stay on top of features, which helps them maintain speed through rapids. The Braaap has that, and it also has the planing stern (discussed above) which accelerates it out from boofs and holes. But the low overall volume of the boat makes paddling it quickly through whitewater more challenging than a more traditional creekboat.

Keeping your bow on top of features requires being conscious of the currents affecting your stern (which is often underwater), something that most whitewater paddlers are not used to. Once you get used to it—or if you’re already used to it from paddling slalom or squirt boating—the boat can be maneuvered very quickly, but requires constant vigilance.

So, is the boat made for racing? I guess it’s unclear at this point. There’s no question that there are certain kinds of races it could really shine in, especially as Giant Slalom (aka class V slalom) becomes more popular. But I’m not sure that, even in the best hands, it’s the fastest boat for racing downstream in heavy whitewater. I think the low volume (which is something that grants a lot of the characteristics that I like about the boat) precludes it from that title, which, at this time, probably belongs to the 9R, though that’s another discussion altogether…

Maneuvering and Holding a Line

Everything is a tradeoff in kayak design, and traditional creekboats have long treated the planing vs. displacement debate as a question of maneuverability vs. holding a line. Recent designs have begun to put that assessment into question by adopting different paradigms for the bow and the stern in the same boat.

While the Braaap is technically a displacement hull from front to back, the stern is so thin that the hull/deck transition acts as an edge, allowing the Braaap to take advantage of some of the perks of a planing hull. An extremely round and rockered bow prevents it from being the most consistent boat in terms of holding a line, but put it on its side and from the midpoint back, the boat behaves like it has a razor-sharp edge. Its generally long and narrow shape also helps the boat gather and maintain momentum in a specific direction.

One thing that I touched on earlier, though, is that it’s easy for paddlers who’ve never used a slalom boat to get thrown off by the stern. At 160 lbs, the stern is often underwater for me—sometimes when I want it to be, and sometimes when I don’t. Squirt boaters are undoubtedly aware of this, but the rest of us don’t really process the extent to which currents differ on a micro scale throughout a river.

Having your stern underwater forces an acute awareness of this, and it’s very easy to get surprised by the way the current will push on the stern and throw you off line. But it’s just like having your bow pearl while surfing a wave: put the boat on edge, and it usually comes right back out.

In terms of maneuverability and ease of turning, the bow rocker makes it easy to turn, and the lack of stern volume makes it even easier to turn. Paddlers who are not aware of the concept of a pivot turn—a slalom technique where you dip the stern underwater in order to turn more quickly—will learn very quickly in this boat.

NEXT: Rolling, Surfing, Etc.