British South Island Expedition - March 2000
 

We tested 5 eskimo kendo evolutions and 3 eskimo quadros, various Lendal carbon fibre shafted kinetic and asymmetric mania blades, DES.UK.COM drycags and spraydecks plus a range of outdoor gear from Mountain Hardware. The South Island of New Zealand provides a tough test for paddling gear, with both steep, isolated creeks and powerful higher volume runs. The consequences of gear failure in the mountains or a blown deck or broken paddle in the midst of Nevis Bluff would have been extremely serious. In addition, the quadro was designed as a versatile playboat, not to run creeks like the Perth. The fact that all of our equipment performed superbly despite being pushed to its limits is a credit to the designers and, of course, underpinned our choice of this equipment in the first place.

System X Kendo Evolution

A big improvement over the older kendo; faster, more responsive, especially when surfing. Solid and reliable, and as expected bloody strong. Still playable on really big water features with the flatter hulls allowing flat spins and other new moves. A superb river running boat, with the lack of central buoyancy allowing kit space and reducing entrapment worries.

Biggest problem area was the backstrap. This provides little back support and is inferior to others on the market.  Excellent footrest, however when pulled really short the ends of the metal sidebars sit right under your knees.  Throwline holder is an excellent idea and very well placed.
 
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System X Quadro
For more fun on the river the Eskimo Quadro was the boat of choice. Its edges make it much more unforgiving than the Kendo, and it is slower, plus on harder stuff you may end up seeing the sky more frequently than is comfortable.  However, for flat spins it is awesome.  For other freestyle moves it is not that great however.  It is not quite slicey enough to easily perform cartwheel moves and is noticeably faster than the Kendo once planing.

The foam block footrest design was generally thought to be a good concept for the new playboat shapes.  However, the concern remained that these blocks may fall out should the paddler take a swim.  Same concerns as for the Kendo with respect to the backstrap.
 
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Lendal Kinetic and Asymmetric Mania blades
Superb, solid and reassuring were all words that cropped up a lot. Overall, the Lendal blades were perhaps the teams most liked piece of equipment, exactly what was needed for hard, steep creeking where the consequences of a broken paddle aren't worth contemplating. Everyone who had used the standard Mania blades on our previous trip to Turkey preferred the blade shape of the kinetics or asymmetric Manias, commenting on the positive feel in the water. The only real comment was that the Nylon/carbon composite blades need to be lighter to compete with glass/carbon composite blades.

Paddlok system:

Excellent idea. The piece of equipment everyone wanted to buy.  Lots and lots of interest generated by the system, we demonstrated them at both the Mangahoa and Wairoa paddling meets and rapidly drew crowds of locals.
 
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DES.UK.COM Spraydecks and cags
General comment that kept resurfacing - ``this gear is much better than I thought it was going to be''. Initial impressions of the equipment tend to be biased by the generally poor cut, unimaginative colouring and funny looking (thin or mottled) material.  That said, the decks are really solid, not one has blown off in over a year of hard use.  After a year of hard use (around 2 months of paddling days) the cags have basically worn out but have otherwise held together well.

Dean Maragh of DES.UK.COM responds; "We are pleased that you feel that the DES gear continues to provide excellent value for money and have proved themselves to be up to the job in your most demanding conditions. We feel the cut of the cag does not restrict paddling techniques (good and bad) and having limited colours in the cag makeup helps to keep costs down. The decks continue to be our best seller, particularly the custom decks for unusual boats and for those requiring latex protection and latex sticking power."
 
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Mountain Hardwear Jackets, Fleeces and Tents

Perhaps the end of summer in New Zealand was not the ideal climate in which to test the latest outdoor gear. Still, we tried. This stuff is expertly designed, well built and looks incredibly reliable. Style-wise we kept drawing attention and immediate respect in gear shops so can't be bad. Although we had a few trivial concerns everyone was incredibly impressed with the Mountain Hardware equipment, if you want the latest, top of the range gear then you can't go far wrong with this stuff.
 
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Lendal
Jessops logo
System X
DES.UK.COM
Mountain Hardwear