Whenever I get in a new half-slice, I try to find the sweet spot where I can stand up and pivot. I found that this boat is easier than the Braaap and Rewind. You can also feel confident plugging through the holes with ease.īut is it easy to stand up on the tail? YES. It is a comforting to have a boat takes only a few paddle strokes to get up to speed and have you planing over features with a dry bow and face.

If you have to dive the bow, it will go down and get you through the hole safely without backendering. The fairly aggressive bow rocker keeps it riding high and dry through waves and over holes, but not so much that you lose the ability to charge through features if needed. It is a great boat for taking down rocky creeks. The Ripper makes this happen for you even off the smallest of features. There is no better feeling than a juicy boof onto a boily pool where you find yourself skipping out and grinning. It only takes a few strokes to get this boat going, and once up there the planing hull jumps into action – keeping you on top of the boils and skipping out of drops. The slalom feel comes out very vividly when it gets up to speed. It has a similar paddling cadence to the RPM, the timeless Dagger boat, but now with the right amount of rocker and volume to make running the stouts enjoyable and not terrifying.Īt 9’ long, it has the waterline similar to the Pyranha’s revolutionary 9' race boat, the 9R. The length ensures its speed is not compromised while making a fun-focused design. This ability to change direction on a dime helps the boat guide you to eddies on the river you would have never found before. I have found that this allows me to engage the edge effortlessly in order to pivot on the stern. The Ripper is a narrow design coming in at 24.5” for the medium. Pyranha's Ripper is crisp, has an edge, and is narrow and fast. When they squished that stern, it made us all feel like Jessica Fox taking gold in the K1 slalom division down our local class III, accelerating faster and standing it up for a few classy tailies. It has that classic hull that Pyranha is famous for. The Antix 2.0 is the closest to a traditional playboat of all the half-slices, but unless you're Dane Jackson this boat is only good for getting sendy if you feel overly confident on the run. Rounded hull boats are faster but have less primary stability. The Liquidlogic Braaap is an older design with a rounded hull.

There are several options out there for a solid half-slice boat.

If you feel like you've progressed to the point where your backyard run is no longer challenging, running it with a half-slice can push you out of your comfort zone and encourage playfulness and speed on runs that typically feel like snoozers. And for good reason: half-slice kayaks are just more fun. Let's face it: half-slice kayaks have taken over the sport of whitewater kayaking in recent years.

Pyranha ripper vs dagger rewind