Stability

Secondary stability: it’s a phrase I’ve heard many racers throw around while out on group paddles or boat demos or any time a racing buddy purchases a new ski. “One thing I love about the new boat is its secondary stability.” It seems to be a quality that’s important in any new boat purchase. As a young racer who always grew up in surfskis, stability was a quality that came naturally with age. Early on in my paddling educations, there were never different types of stability; I either could or could not keep myself up right in the boat. For any new paddler, stability means simply: are you comfortable paddling that boat? Can you take strokes without bracing? And eventually, can you use good technique without bracing?

However, as I grew up within the paddling world, stability grew too be more complicated than just a vague idea of comfort level. Every experienced paddler can hop into a boat on flat water and either feel immediately solid or uneasy: that wobbliness. This is what I would call that whole initial stability thing. We as surfski paddlers then take it to the next level, and test our stability in waves, winds, troughs, roughs, rains, currents, swells, and surges. We push ourselves to see how that innate stable comfort changes in the boat as we paddle on any/all forms of water. How does the boat respond here? Does it pick up the swell and run with it? A paddler can be happy to have a ski eager to hop on waves. We need a boat that naturally wants to sit upright and stick to the front face of the groundswell; a ski with good attitude: good secondary stability.

Since switching to the flat water game, there are a few things I’ve discovered about this whole initial/secondary stability logic. Surfski’s have good initial stability (Relatively): if you are paddling out on a mellow day, the boat will naturally sit up right. A solid ski will also be smart in the waves: it will pick up the bumps. However when it comes to flat water boats, all bets are off. These boats prefer to be on their sides and prefer to bust through swells instead of onto them. Of course this is a result of the shape of the hull and their “purpose” on the water: flat water boats were never designed with big wave conditions in mind. However, what has fascinated me about the two genres of boats, is how much you must change (and train) your stability to match the boat. Flat water and ocean paddling are truly different sports. They require different focuses, goals, techniques, and, as I’ve just begun to understand, different types of stability.