: I prefaced my comment with "as a general rule" because I know
: somebody would pop up and say there is a boat that can outfox the laws of
: hydrodynamics. I don't know and from the other comments made here no one
: else seems to know if such a boat exists, either.
: From my very limited experience there is no world-beater short sea kayak.
: When the testers at Canoe & Kayak do their boat tests the longer boat
: always, always, alway shows it's heels to, and has more glide than the
: shorter ones.
: The Wood Duck is a new hull and seems to be getting a solid reception. I
: interpret that to mean it fits the paddling requirements of a lot of
: people not that it has conquered the limitations of waterline length and
: wetted area.

Hold on, I don't disagree with you, I was just pointing out that there is such a thing as an efficient and capable short sea kayak. I think what you said is correct - most of the companies that design short boats put approximately no thought or effort into it. The result is a world of bargy short boats which are annoying to paddle, which has the unintended consequence of making is seem that you need a long pointy boat to be efficient.

The exceptions seem to be when real designers give it a try, yielding, e.g. the Wood Ducks, the Mariner Coaster and the Cape Falcon SC-1 and F-1. I have an SC-1 and it is a highly capable 14 foot sea kayak that outperforms many much longer boats. It's not even a skinny boat at 23.5", it just has a extremely well thought-out hull shape. There are other short and sweet sea kayaks out there, I'm sure.

No boat can outfox the laws of hydrodynamics - they're physical laws, after all. You're correct that longer boats have higher theoretical hull speed, but an extrememly small percentage of paddlers ever have their boat at hull speed for more than a few minutes. I think the testers at C&K tend to be in this minority, so it probably skews the results (which are anecdotal anyway). Fwiw, a well-designed shorter boat should have better glide because there is less wetted surface so less frictional resistance.