Hello Kurt,

Actually I agree in part- most of the displacement hull SUP's out there are designed by surfers and are really overgrown surfboards. The Malco is actually designed more for surfing, as I live where you have to paddle WAY out to surf, so the board was intended to paddle to your favorite spot, surf, then paddle home. It has a slight nose concave that allows it to get on plane when surfing. There are some displacement hull designs more suited for paddling, but even a lot of those still lean towards surfing swells.

That said, I am working on an SUP that has a kayak hull, and in fact I used Ross Leidy's Kayak Foundry in part during the design process. It is going to be very off the beaten path for SUP's. Yesterday I met with a SUP racer and I checked out three Naish boards, all CF and in the $3k price range. All of them were marketed as displacement hull racers, but all of them had flat bottoms, and I mean FLAT. I may wind up a laughing stock, but the board I am designing has a pronounced vee to it, with a hard chine that transitions into a near 90 degree sheer for stability, but most of the wetted surface is a vee. It has a typical kayak football profile to the hull, ending in a nearly pointed tail. There's a raised deck like a kayak for added buoyancy when piercing waves. The friction curves look more like that of a kayak- in fact, I actually used known kayak designs that I'm familiar with as comparison when getting my target for speed and stability. It's going to have the stability of a very stable kayak, which will make it a very tippy SUP, but it should have lots of secondary stability.

I'm going to do a prototype and since this is so closely related to kayaks I will post progress here. I am planning on using Paulownia for the hull. If you haven't tried it you should- amazingly light like balsa, yet feels like pine in the hand.

And BTW, I agree with Robert, that's a nice hat.