It’s Just A Rumor

In mid-April...I went lookin' another boat and saw an ad for a Current Designs Rumor on www.paddling.net.

I contacted he owner and made arrangements to try it out. He lived a few hours away so I drove down on a Sunday afternoon in mid April for a test paddle.

Nice, looking traditional lines…16 feet by 19.75”. Tried her out on land and the cockpit was narrow. It was only 14.5” wide by 24" long. They call it a modified ocean cockpit. There was some light chop with about 1.5 to 2 foot waves on Lake Winnebago. I didn’t want to scratch the hull on the rocky beach, and so waded out into a few feet of water and cowboyed in. A little dicey with the narrow cockpit and narrow beam. As I slid into the cockpit, the backrest folded down onto the seat and the spray skirt was caught under me as well. With the cockpit only 14” wide there wasn’t much room to get a hand down to the seat and pull up the backband and skirt, especially doing a balancing act in the choppy water. Anyway I managed to get everything in place and paddle around for 30 minutes, did a little surfing, tried the skeg; found a few breaking waves to blast through near shore went up and down wind. I liked the way the boat handled. It wasn’t too unstable with that narrow beam, but I kept thinking about the narrow cockpit. That could present problems during a reentry and roll or a paddle float entry, especially if it was rough. Even landing/launching on a beach with breaking waves would be tough getting out quickly. I did not want to just run up on the beach and jump out as the boat was basically like new and it wasn’t mine, so I popped the skirt before landing and managed to get out just before the beach. Well sort of fell out. I had a Valley boat with an ocean cockpit for 20 years…that cockpit was several inches wider, but shorter and for me it was easy to enter or exit…anyway I passed on the boat for the cockpit. If I had bought it, I’d replace the cockpit with a keyhole type. It is still in production, but with that small cockpit, I can't imagine it sells very well.  The dealer Ross bought it from had it in stock for over a year.  Now I'd like to try a Romany.