: Nick paddled his Razor Bill design in the Blackburn Challenge this
: year...according to their web page he finished 8th out of 50 in the
: touring kayak class...maybe we could ask him to comment on what other
: designs he saw out there...and how fast is the Razor Bill ? Nick ?

Most of the boats finishing ahead of me were Seda Gliders. Tom Page finished ahead of me with his own design stripper, I don't know the particulars of Tom's boat. As I was racing I was thinking about how I could make the Razor Bill faster, but most of the ideas would make the boat less useful as a touring boat because it involves giving it a much narrower waterline. This would make the boat much less stable and have less room for gear. I feel my finish was respectable given my relative lack of physical conditioning.

The link below lists the results for the race. BTW, my GPS gave a total distance of 19.6 miles, not the 22 advertised. My average speed was 5.6 mph with a max of 9.9 mph (probably during a brief section of surfing steep boat wakes near the end of the race). The winning single sea kayak maintained an average speed of about 6.5 mph. The Razor Bill is capable of this, but I am not. My speed in the first half of the race was in the lower to mid 6's but it fell into the mid to high 4's in the second half as I bonked. My time improved by 15 minutes over my previous best which was in my Night Heron.