jpw ISUP Grand Canyon Performance report

Jpw paddle board goes down the grand- A performance report by Jon Kittell

Overall I was extremely impressed with your SUP board. With my first paddle strokes on the board I found it to be the most stable board (while still maintaining paddling functionality) that I have even been on. Initially in the whitewater it was a bit more squirely than the board I was used to running in big water (NRS Czar). I believe this is due to the large amount of kick in the bow of the board. The bigger volume hydraulic waves would grab the bow and want to spin the board to the left or the right. However after seeing this and adjusting my paddle strokes to accommodate for it I fell in love with the board. I stuck some huge lines where big hydraulic waves came crashing down over the board and it pushed right through them. It was great to have a big platform to balance on as I moved through the large volume waves. The shape of the board is ideal and allowed for the perfect combination of downriver speed and stability while still maintaining the agility and turn radius necessary to run a SUP down-river. I could fall behind the rafts eddy hopping or surfing and paddle them down with ease due to the long water line. The long water line also allowed me to gain the necessary acceleration to move laterally in the river while running the rapids (something that many inflatable boards lack). Edging the board in the big volume boils also worked extremely well. Because of the shape and size of the side wall I was able to set a "chine" in a single current and glide effortlessly through the swirly and boiling eddy lines of the Colorado. I have struggled to make other boards respond in this manner and thought it was one of my favorite features of your board. We had many folks on the trip that are new to SUPing (a couple that were new to the river in general) and throughout the trip I was able to convince most of them to get on and try to SUP. Your board was by far the preferred board for the beginners (we also brought along Elizabeth's NRS Mayra). First timers felt comfortable with the stability almost immediately. Overall I thought that the board has many incredible features that make it ideal for the first time user and expert alike.

There were a couple of modifications that I thought maybe we could work on for future designs. First I was not the biggest fan of the blunt nose. I really liked the rocker (once I got used to it) but found that the blunt nose is a large flat surface for the recirculating white part of the wave/hole to catch. A design that is a little more aerodynamic I think would be more ideal. There were many situations where my acceleration into a rapid was stopped (and my momentum thrown forward) because my nose hit a recirculating current. Combined with the great rocker, if the nose had a more "wave cutting" design I believe the board would slice through the waves even more successfully. I was thinking either a rounded nose (similar to the NRS Mayra) or bring the nose to the point (like the NRS Czar). While I believe either would be preferred to the blunt nose the pointed nose would be the most ideal.

I also had a couple of situations where the board literally "bucked" upwards in the rapids. I believe this is happening when the board climbs the face of a steep wave while the wave is crashing under it. The recirculating crashing current stands up the front of the board and sends the stern down into the trough of the wave where the river current is accelerating. The fins and stern catch the fast moving current and the board bucks because the front of the board is getting stood up and slowed down while the back of the board is getting shoved down and is accelerating. This happened to me a couple of times throughout the trip in bigger, steeper waves and I could not figure out how to address the problem. I thought I had a good idea about what was happening and when I returned home my suspicions were confirmed when I was watched a rapid that I filmed where this occurred. I have been thinking a lot about what causes it to "buck" (length, bow shape, etc). I cannot seem to put my finger on it yet so thought I would throw it out to you and see if you had any ground breaking ideas. I have run the board a little bit now back home on the Salmon and am finding that when I put the board into steep hydraulic waves the same action from the board occurs. So I have the issue pinpointed...just not a solution yet. Perhaps it is just that the board is a foot longer than the boards I have paddled in the past and the length is simply too long for the short, steep faced wave trains.

Although I did not run any gear on the board I am really excited about the future prospect of running some self-support SUP trips with it. I think this niche is one where the Jacks board is going to blow away all others. I do think that in order to run gear on the board successfully though we need to change to placement of the D-rings. I love the side-by-side set of rings in the middle of board (great for rigging tight to the board) however the location of them really close to where I place my feet. If I ran dry bags here they would be in the way of my feet and a big foot entrapment. Also the D-rings in the front are right where my paddle crosses the board when I use off-hand paddle strokes. Not a big issue for people who do not cross over but for my style I cannot fit a bag at the very front because it would get in the way of my paddle. I am not sure about the location of the rear D-rings. I was originally thinking that putting them a little closed to center would be nice to keep the weight more centered and off of the stern of the board. Now that I am home I am going to start playing around with adding weight to the board and will have more ideas/comments in the future. I do think moving the middle set of rings to the upper end of the foam foot bed and moving the upper set back about 6 inches would be ideal. Maybe if we did this we could eliminate one pair of rings and just have 2 per side?

Elizabeth enjoyed the board however she has always struggled with 6 inch boards. She paddles a NRS Mayra (4 inch) and has always felt more comfortable on 4 inch boards. She uses the lower floatation to push under the recirculating whitewater and connect with the river current. When paddling a 6 inch board she does not weigh enough to do this. However she excited about the gear hauling potential of the 6 inch board and thinks that adding weight could get the board to perform as she is used to.

Notes from Jack:

Some of Jon’s Ideas are easy to implement, some are more difficult. ISUP use a fabric called drop stitch. It is not easy to make bend the way you want it to. There are geometrical constraints built into this material that make it difficult to work with. Jon is the kind of customer we like to work with, because he has some very specific Ideas that may improve the overall performance of an ISUP for a specific purpose. That is something that you will not be able to get from a Chinese manufacturer.

Remember that our Boards are welded, not glued, and they are made in the USA. If anyone can produce a board with the qualities that Jon is looking for, It should be JPW.

Thank you Jon for such a great test, such thoughtful insight into performance. I hope to see some of these videos soon and include them in this web page.

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