That's a great writeup. Thanks a lot for taking the time to do that for me.

3:40 is a very respectable time. I was looking at past results, and while I don't know the intricacies of the class system it looks like you would definitely be competing in the "Epic" class. There looked to be a couple of Stellars in that class, but... I did some testing last summer in my Night Heron and was able to average 6.5 knots over a kilometer with some repeatability, but I have no idea how that would translate in a longer race. I've never tried to monitor speed over a longer paddle because I don't own a GPS. (I was actually testing my paddles to see if the one that felt the fastest actually WAS the fastest. It wasn't. One that felt much slower and was quite flexible was...)

I built my Night Heron as a day boat and altered the deck height accordingly, and I want a faster kayak. The trouble is I want to do some touring now too, and besides time constraints for things like building kayaks, I have a spouse-enforced kayak ownership limit, and I got rid of one to make way for a new one, but I can't really see myself getting rid of any others. I want to replace one of them with a different boat that performs the same function, but that's a wash. I can live with a kayak that's all right for touring but is a fast kayak. That's a pretty small sweet spot...

Wish I were headed out toward MA any time soon, but it's not going to happen. Thanks for the generous offer of a test paddle, though!

Mike