Does the thought of bouncing around in the rapids excite you? Freestyle Kayaking or Playboating is an entire subculture of kayaking dedicated to thrills and spills in the water. Playboats move downstream fast, making it easy for riders to tackle challenging obstacles and whitewater conditions while providing stability in the ride.
Playboats are purpose-built kayaks designed for the most demanding whitewater conditions. They rely on design terms like edge profile (rail), rocker, and hull shape to define the performance of the boat in the water.
Play boats let you surf whitewater waves, squirt in those eddylines, and bust out freestyle tricks like the “macho move.” It’s kind of the kayaking equivalent of snowboarding, with riders doing everything they can to put themselves in hair-raising scenarios that get the adrenaline coursing through their veins.
This guide to play boats unpacks everything you need to know about this extreme sport. Are you ready? Let’s dive in!
Contents
What is Playboating?
Playboating involves the art of using whitewater features like holes, waves, and eddies to create tricks and surf. Depending on the size of the whitewater, playboating can provide some compelling viewing, and it’s even more hair-raising for the person in the boat.
However, playboaters are a different breed of people. Along with other high-intensity extreme sports like wingsuiting, playboating is one of the few extreme sports that’s places your life in grave danger if things go wrong in heavy conditions.
Still, it’s understandable why people decide to give playboating a try. It starts with your first white water rafting experience. Then before you know it, you’re kayaking down rapids by yourself. Finally, you’re trading in your kayak for a playboat. You find yourself busting out tricks on the whitewater. At the same time, everyone else marvels at your skill and death-defying bravery on the water.
Playboating gained a huge surge in popularity in the extreme sports community over the last decade. The innovations in equipment design meant less-experienced riders could pull off advanced tricks in the water with only a few months in the boat.
Traditional river running takes a lot of planning and resources. When heading out for a whitewater trip, it requires guides, coordination with a field office, people at the end of the run to take you back, and a guest liaison to ensure everyone has a happy and safe experience.
However, with playboating, it’s a different story. You can just roll up to the parking lot at the river, jump in your boat, and go for a session in the rapids.
The History of Playboating
Whitewater kayakers have a long history of playing in the rapids while floating down rivers across the United States and the world.
Some of the earliest records of kayakers using playing techniques in the rapids come from the basic surfing of waves and doing “enders,” a trick involving plunging the bow or stern of the kayak into the wave-hole, using the trapped buoyancy to propel the boat out of the water with force, resulting in a bounce.
Squirt boating started in the 80s with two brothers, Jeff and Jim and Snyder. The brothers launched the sport along with a small unit of other kayakers and slalom racers in West Virginia. The squirt boat featured a low volume design, enabling the rider to tap into the rapid in a 3D manner instead of from one angle of approach to the surface currents.
This was the crucial tipping point in the sport and the industry and the beginning of playboating. Squirt boating is still a small subculture of whitewater kayaking. Still, most people just gravitate to playboating or creek boating instead.
The 90s saw kayak manufacturing brands take specific elements of squirt boat design, applying them to new hull designs in modern kayaks, resulting in the first iterations of the playboat.
Conventional kayaks and canoes come with a rounded hull offering the riders more stability on the water. However, design specialists found that reducing the volume in the boat and making it sit higher on the water allows for greater maneuverability in the boat and the ability to approach the water from any angle.
Play boats can cartwheel and spin, with the low volume on the ends of the boat, leading to some impressive maneuvers in the water.
What are the Different Types of Playboats?
Play boats come with a purpose-built design for different riders’ needs. Here are the three common types of playboats.
Freestyle Playboats
These boats have an opposite design to the features of the creek boat. They have sharp edges and very low volume, making them incredibly easy to maneuver in the water. They make handling rapids more challenging to the rider, but they increase the ability to surf and complete tricks.
Competition Playboats
These boats are short and thick, with a more bulbous hull design. They are ideal for surfing or pitching in holes. They are a great choice for air tricks and are popular in competitions and play parks. They feature a longer design with less volume in the bow and stern and narrow width.
The length permits better river running while the low volume bow and stern on the boat allow the rider to pull off tricks like cartwheels and stern stalls.
Slice Style Playboats
These playboats get design inspiration from the boats of the early 2000s. Some riders prefer this old-school design, allowing for a unique and fun paddling style.
The playboat lacks stability, so it’s a terrible choice for touring, and you’ll fall over to either side. They rely on the momentum of the river and the waves in the rapids to drive them forward.
Understanding Playboat Terminology
The terminology with playboats can get confusing for newbies to the sport. “Playboat” can describe both play runners and freestyle kayaks. So, using the playboat blanket reference doesn’t impress the design difference between the competition and freestyle boats.
However, certain design principles govern the shape and function of the playboat. Here are the common terms you’ll hear when enthusiasts start talking about boats.
Playboat Design
Play runners and freestyle boats share some similar design characteristics. Both models have a progressive rocker profile, planing hull, and hard edging. However, that’s where the similarities in the boats end.
The play runner and the freestyle boat differ in volume distribution, length, and edge profile. The play runner comes with a design that focuses on stability with more length and an even distribution of the volume, with a thinner stern and bow on the boat.,
The freestyle kayak has a short length with more volume to give the rider buoyancy to perform tricks.
Rocker
The rocker describes the curve of the hull and the steepness of that curve. Play runners will have less rocker than freestyle boats. The more rocker in the hull, the easier it is to fit into the wave face and create sharp turns and pivots.
The lower the rocker, the faster the boat, but the less maneuverable it becomes. Most playboat designs feature a continuous rocker. The rocker profile provides the paddler with a looser, responsive feel in the water, making it easier to pull off spins.
This kind of rocker provides the rider with more stability during tricks. It’s also more forgiving when navigating the river, offering the rider more speed when moving down the wave face.
The “Kick rocker” in the boat refers to the rocker in the tail, and the more kick rocker, the more control the kayaker has, but the slower the boat in the wave. Longer edge profiles make it less easy for the rider to move the boat around in the wave.
Rocker can be linear, gradual, or progressive. With progressive rocker profiles, the rate of curvature will increase toward the end of the boat. In that way, it’s very similar to kick rocker. The curvature rate stays consistent throughout the rocker length on the gradual or linear rocker profile.
Most modern playboat designs feature linear rocker profiles with a little kick rocker in the tail. This rocker profile allows for short freestyle playboat designs that stay fast when planning a wave.
Edges and Hull
Whitewater kayaks utilize a displacement or planning hull. The planing hull is flat from edge to edge, while the displacement hull has a rounded shape. River runners and creek boats come in various hull designs, play runners, and freestyle kayaks have a planing hull since it’s best for surfing waves and holes.
Manufacturing brands can combine the features of the planning hull with different edges, varying from soft to hard, depending on what you want to do with the boat.
The play runners have a softer edge than the freestyle boat, making them less “grabby” and easier to roll and enter eddies. Combining the planing hull with soft edges makes a more forgiving paddle and ride for those playboaters that want a less aggressive experience.
Using hard edges on aggressive freestyle boat designs lets riders perform maneuvers and lay down big carves that help them pop airs off the wave. However, hard edges can make tricks like controlled carves and flat spins more challenging.
Boat manufacturing brands design playboats with “double edges to mitigate this issue.” This design includes soft edges plus harder secondary edges, which engage when the rider wants to edge transfer on a wave or cave.
Length
Play runners are longer than freestyle boats. So, freestyle boats allow riders to plunge their nose deep into the water to get a huge pop on their exit. The extra length in play runners improves the tracking, making paddling easier. That’s less important in freestyle boats where the river is doing the work of moving your forward.
Shorter boats have less swing weight because the boat’s weight is closer to the rider. While this design is appealing for trick-heavy riders, it does have a downside. The short length from the bow to stern makes it easy to pearl the nose when paddling downstream.
However, it also makes it easy for the rider to sink the stern and catch the boat’s edge when entering and exiting eddies. The short stern makes rolling more challenging since coming up on the back deck destabilizes the rider.
The low spin weight on the freestyle boat does make tricks like airscrews easier to pull off. However, it makes classic tricks like the stern squirt and cartwheel more difficult to complete due to the faster rotation.
So, short length is great for progressive and advanced riders. It’s also a good choice for those paddlers looking to perfect their technique. However, it’s the more challenging boat for beginners looking to unwind and enjoy their time on the river.
The longer play runner solves this stability and submerging issue. You get some trick performances, but they are more for enjoying the movement without worrying about capsizing all the time.
Tips to Enjoy Your Playboating Experience
Choose the Right Playboat
Take time testing out different playboat designs. Join a club and ask people to try their boats. Most of them won’t have any problem sharing their equipment when they aren’t using it. The boat needs to offer a tight fit and feel like it has the right cockpit size to let you maneuver properly.
Paddle with Correct Technique
Keep a wide grip on your paddle and use a shorter paddle than the standard kayaking paddle. We recommend looking for lightweight carbon fiber paddles. Remember to bend your elbows as much as possible.
Active Paddling
To prevent your boat from spinning out of control, drag a paddle in the water in the direction you want to turn. Keep control over the boat at all times; remember, playboats are designed to toss and turn, so you need to have full control over your equipment.
Take an Aggressive Approach
Play boaters need an aggressive approach to the rapids. Maintain good paddling posture and keep yourself upright in the boat at all times. Lean forward and keep your hips loose to control the boat and its tilting action.
Wrapping Up – Join a Play Boating Club
If you want to start playboating, it’s a good idea to have some whitewater experience and a strong background in swimming or watersports. Look for a whitewater club in your area and find out what trips they organize. They may offer playboating courses teaching you the basics of the sport.
It’s always a good idea to go playboating with friends or a group. Going by yourself can be risky, especially in high-water conditions. If you go alone, make sure you tell someone where you’re going and when they can expect you back.
