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P&H Scorpio and Delphin
Submitted by BradOO <swwparkalliance@aol.com> on 03/Sep/2010
24.112.143.242
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P&H Delphin – CKUK Ocean Play Award
RRP£1049
More info: www.phseakayaks.com
The team at P&H have turned out some really great new designs over the last couple of years. On the composite side we loved their Cetus design and they followed that up with the Scorpio a plastic cousin to the Cetus. Sea boats designed to be more playful are not a new idea but with the design of their new ‘Ocean Play’ Sea kayak the Delphin the P&H designers have ditched any preconceived ideas about sea kayak design thrown the rulebook out of the window. A brave move in a discipline and market where traditional designs are revered. What they have come up with is a sea boat that revels in extremely rough water, yet can still cut it on longer trips and inspire confidence in less experienced paddlers. On first sight the Delphin is no classic beauty, but on closer inspection and after getting to know it better its quirky looks really grew on us. The Delphin has a ton of rocker, on the shore it almost looked asymmetrical, but because they’ve positioned the cockpit so far back once you get on the water it doesn’t seem so pronounced. The bow has been chopped and squared off so as you paddle forwards it engages with the water and helps the Delphin track. The outfitting was great and the Delphin gave a very positive and comfortable position with its ratchet style back-band. Construction is from P&H’s stiff and tough triple-layer Corelite and storage came in the shape of a large stern and bow bulkheads with hatches, plenty of space for day-tripping kit. The Delphin was surprisingly fast; much better than we’d assumed it would be and has really quick acceleration for catching waves. Out on the water it paddled really differently to all the other boats, but it’s fair to say that we loved it. It is really, really easy to edge and its manoeuvrability is amazing. We were able to carve turns in and out of tricky rock gardens with ease and were happy to try moves that we wouldn’t have in the other boats, with maybe the exception of the Alchemy. In the waves the Delphin was again brilliant fun and we found ourselves picking bigger and bigger waves and dropping in later than we’d dare in other sea kayaks. We knew from the pre-release hype that the Delphin was going to cut it in the ‘play’ department, but what we weren’t expecting was how well it coped with ‘proper’ sea paddling as well. As we’ve already stated it’s initial and secondary stability are excellent and it edges and carves with ease, but drop the skeg and get your head down and it also tracks very well and is more than capable of racking up the sea miles on longer trips. The faster we paddled the better it seemed to track! We tested the 155 version of the Delphin, but there’s also a 150 version in the pipeline for smaller paddlers too. We wouldn’t go as far as saying that we’d choose one for multi-day or expedition purposes, but for day-trips and maybe the odd over night camping trip? Definitely, especially if there’s going to be the odd tidal race, rock garden or surf break along the way. If exploring the coastlines rock gardens and caves, catching waves and generally playing on the sea is what you love then the Delphin is for you, and we can certainly see many ‘expedition’ sea paddlers adding a Delphin to the boat rack as a second boat for days when they just want to head out for some fun. It can’t win our overall best in test award because, as good as it is, it is still predominantly an ocean play boat but we liked it so very much we’ve invented a brand new CKUK award, just for the Delphin.
Specs:
Length: 472cm
Width: 57cm
Weight: 24kg
Volume: 290lts
Max Load: 125kgs
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