Cliff Roach and I set out to paddle Mark Ceconi’s brand new Fenn Elite tandem surfski for the purposes of writing a review for surfskiracing.com. Clearly, Mark has been hanging out with his eternally optimistic elementary school students for too long, the poor trusting soul had no idea what we were capable of doing to a boat.

As you can see, we took it out in very rough conditions on Pennsylvania’s beautiful Lake Nockamixon. Massive ¼ to ½ inch waves, driven by the 1-2 MPH winds, hit us on the beam. Water temperatures were somewhere between “bath” and “hot tub.” Air temperatures hung at “we could fry an egg on the pavement” and increased to “hot as hell” by the time we were done.

The first task was keeping the boat upright. I had heard this was a tippy surfski, and I made the mistake of expressing this concern to Cliff, causing him to laugh himself silly and reply with, “it’s a surfski, you paddle K1s, get in the boat.” Note the result below.

We discovered how quickly those random 3 MPH wind gusts can tear a surfski from our hands and blow it across the lake. Cliff had to swim for the boat in the huge developing 1 inch swells.  Here you see Cliff and me in the middle of the lake, having a “discussion” about Cliff’s random test of my stability and the boat’s ease of re-entry.

Back closer to land, I explain to Cliff that it is much easier to keep the boat upright when he is not voluntarily jumping out of it. Below is the conversation while paddling in the middle of the lake, occurring at the time the boat was still upright (the conversation after the boat was no longer upright contained more swearwords):

CLIFF: This is so stable, I wonder if I can jump out and you would still stay in the boat?
ME: You do remember that I don’t know how to swim, right?
CLIFF: Don’t worry about it, I’ll jump out and you’ll just stay in the boat. You brace left, and I’ll jump out.
ME: At least the water’s warm.

I then brace left. Cliff proceeds to quickly lean the boat way over to the right, and jumps out on the right. Ok Cliff, I must point out two observations here (a) we’ve been BFFs for many years and I honestly didn’t know that you didn’t know your left from your right and, (b) even if you allege that you do know left from right, the bottom line is that bracing left when the boat goes right has some serious logistical, physics, and momentum problems. On the plus side, I had to pee anyway.


We tried again, and again I braced left and Cliff jumped out on the right. We swam to shore and got back in. At this point I am laughing so hard that I can’t even sit up correctly and paddle.

Surprisingly, this boat adjusts to fit my shortness. With a 27” inseam, I was truly surprised to find that the footplate adjusted close enough to fit me! The boat was also wide enough for my fat assets to fit in the seat, albeit a bit snugly. Above, Cliff begins to take his job of making the ski go fast very, very seriously and I’m in the back very seriously wondering how I could install a waterproof Kindle to read while he paddles.


Cliff commented that the ski is not as fast as a K1. Well, (a) what is? And (b) the big secret is that it would probably go a lot faster if the stern paddler was actually putting some effort into paddling instead of contemplating how long it will be before they come up with waterproof flatscreens.

Above, Cliff gains speed as we decide to go for one more try of him jumping out of the boat while I stay in the boat. The conversation goes as follows:

CLIFF: Do you want to try it again? This time I’ll really jump out on the left.
ME: The trust is gone man.
CLIFF: No really, I’ll jump out on the left this time, I really will.
ME: Dude, your credibility is seriously in question at this point.


Success! Cliff jumps out and I stay in. As you can see, there is a lot of hard work that goes into reviewing a surfski. Fortunately we were just the dedicated team to do it. We were willing to labor in such rough conditions to finally get it right.

Now the task became, how does a stern paddler get a tandem surfski to shore when the steering controls are not only in the bow, but in the bow and pushed to the left?


Cliff helped by laughing a lot while I struggled against the 2 MPH winds and massive ½ inch waves to get the ski toward shore. We occasionally had higher waves, but these were mostly self-generated from jumping out of the boat. We did have one powerboat wake, which caused the boat to do nothing more than go up and down while Cliff attempted to throw me out of the boat by leaning back and forth extensively to see how much water the bucket would hold.

Above, once back together with my bowman, I continued to relax while Cliff complained about how deep the front bucket is. We later remedied this problem by having Cliff get back in the boat instead of trying to paddle while standing the in the water beside it. This seemed to raise the seat level considerably.

As far as the build of the boat does, we were very alarmed when we picked the boat up and found there was a large amount of water in the hull. We started looking for signs of where a serious leak might be. After careful consideration, which involved noticing the water flowing out of the drain hole much like Victoria Falls, we determined that the leak problem could be completely solved by remembering to plug the vent on the deck.


It’s a shame that we had such a miserable time in the ski, it was a long hard day but we figured someone had to make the sacrifice. Overall, the negatives from the stern are that there is no cupholder, minifridge, or phone charger capability. The biggest negative of paddling this ski was a bow paddler who insisted on randomly jumping out of the boat. The positives are the super great stability and the comfort of the seating. Cliff decided that the boat was so comfortable that he was going to put it in his living room. Cliff’s two word summary of the Elite: “Very cool.”

It was a good day.

Susan Williams
ladyjustice@erols.com
www.pennkayaker.com/ladyjustice
www.facebook.com/ladyjusticesusan