Prolific kayak, surfboard and sup designer Corran Addison has released two new designs, adding to his 2024 line with a new creek boat pairing, one with a pivotable stern and the other a floating stern, for different river conditions. The unique rocker profiles and volume distribution separate them from the current offerings, and they look to be unique and true to their name.
Paddling Life was able to get some answers to questions we had about these two new shapes, the Super Skipper and Super Skipper RR.
PL: What inspired to you create this new Super Skipper RR and Super Skipper design duo?
CA: Like most of my designs, necessity. I’ve always been a very selfish designer, creating boats I want. Well, as I age and my skill set becomes more questionable, I found myself struggling on rivers I’ve previously run nearly blindfolded. Add to this that 90% of the time I’m paddling slicy tail boats, and my adaptation to a fat boat each time I paddled one was less than smooth. I realized I wanted a creeker that would paddle as much as possible like my half slice, but be a full on no-compromise creekboat. I’m too old and slow to be taking a half slice down real creeks.
But then as I worked on the boat I also realized that there were some rivers where I didn’t want that slicy stern, but I wanted the same feel, and that lead to the development of the second boat. So from early on, they were intended to be essentially the same boat, but one that rides high and dry and one that allows me to tap into sub surface currents like a half slice, without the challenges that paddling a half slice on serious creeks bring.
PL: We are looking at the CAD mock ups and see a unique concavity in the bow underside…what will this provide?
CA: Nothing on the boat is stand alone. Every part works in conjunction with other aspects of the design in a symbiotic relationship. The bow concave works much like the nose concave of a longboard nose rider, providing lift. Working with the converging hull and deck rockers, that follow the same arc, the whole boat lifts the nose while maintaining forward momentum, so that resurfacing isn’t a skyward explosion that’s volume induced, but rather is the result of forward momentum, so you’re always moving away from the feature at the drop base.
PL: With so many half slice options out there, would you elaborate what is different between this Super Skipper RR and the other half slice boats on the market?
CA: Firstly, to point out that the SuperSkipRR is not a half slice. You’re not going to be surfing waves, and doing stern stalls in this boat. It’s 100% hard creek focused, and everything about it is to achieve that end. Where the SuperSkip RR differs from the SuperSkipper is that you can dip the tail to pivot turn it, and use sub surface currents to your advantage. In this way there are some similarities in paddling style that you’d use in a half slice, but it isn’t one.
PL: With so many creek boat options out there, what’s different between this Super Skipper and the other creek boats on the market?
CA: I’ll admit that to the average person, visually it’s hard to see the differences between the SuperSkipper, and other modern creekboats out there. But it’s in the details. The converging hull and deck sweeps, the progressive increase of volume, working with the evolving cross sections, combined with, and intrinsically reliant on, the stern rocker shape put this a boat in a separate category in the way it moves up and away from river features, ramping and skipping over everything.
PL: Do boats with this much bow and stern rocker have a tendency to be slower out on the water? What combats this potential tendency?
CA: Just throwing a bunch of rocker at a design will make it sluggish and slow, yes. It’s all about how it’s done. For sure, more rocker shortens waterline length, and so on flatwater you lose speed no matter what. The key is to maintain speed in whitewater, and the SuperSkipper is very fast moving down through Class V.
PL: Are there other elements besides the rocker and bow concavity that contribute to the skipping tendency of this boat?
CA: It’s everything. Hull shape, rail shape, sidewall shape, the way these converge and open on each other as the rocker sweeps though the boats length. No one design feature is going to achieve what we have; it’s really a very complex blending of all these (and more) aspects.
I knew when I started what it was that I wanted, but it turned out to be a lot harder to get there than I’d anticipated. I think that’s what’s going to separate the SuperSkipper from the pack for some time to come: given how complex it was to get what we wanted, and how little it takes to get it wrong, I expect this to be in a league of its own.
PL: Your outfitting is quite light, could you indicate how much lighter than most other manufacturers?
CA: Using things like foam seats helps reduce weight overall, but really it’s more about the plastic. Using a stiffer and stronger (but sadly more expensive) polymer allows us to achieve similar stiffness and impact resistant with a little less of it, so we can reduce hull weight as well as that of the internals.
PL: When are these boats due to hit the market in North America?
CA: The molds are being made now, and we expect production by January. However shipping is always hit and miss, so we’re not sure whether we’ll see boats here at the beginning of February or the end of March, but it’ll be in that range.
PL: Are you taking preorders now?
CA: Yeah, we opened up pre-ordering on November 9th, and until the 15th of December are offering a special deal where if you buy one of the boats, you get the other one at 50% off. This is to encourage people to paddle the boats the way they were designed – as a set of tools where you use the best one for each day’s conditions and requirements, but in a way that allows seamless transition from one to the other without an adaptation period.
PL: What Corran color variations will it be offered in?
CA: We have a wide range of color options (six per model), three of which are the heavier stronger construction, and three of which are a slightly lighter construction, depending on your style and needs.
Below is the Super Skipper comparison video by Corran.
Supper Skipper for sale for $1,900 USD at Soul Waterman’s website
