The Development of the Liquidlogic Stinger

It started nearly 6 years ago.  Hard to believe.  I had both a lot less and a lot more hair.  I had fewer wrinkles and we had less technology going into the design of our boats.  The Remix 100 was the original name of the Stinger.  The name came from the 100+ gallons of volume and the common dam release of water on the Green which is 100% of 1 unit.  Woody liked to call the 100% release a "hungee", and so the first proto of what would become the Stinger was called the Hungee.

The original design was a complete side project.  I hammered away on the computer for a few days at home, printed out cross sections and applied them to foam to be cut and glued together to make the model.  It was a mix of modern and a little old school know how that I learned from Alan Stancel (designer of the Dancer) to get this boat together in a hurry for the upcoming Green Race in the fall of 2007.

We were still in our small shop just on the outskirts of Hendersonville, N.C. and only 6.582 minutes from the Put-In of the Green River.  In the design department it was just Allen and I hammering away on models.  In these photos you can see the entire shop.  When we would get busy there wasn't any room to move around.

Once I printed out the cross sections I then cut them all out and glued the entire thing together on a spine to hold it all straight and level.  Then its just a matter of cutting, grinding, and shaping down to the cross sections and you have a boat... sort of.  There are a few more steps in between but you get the idea.

This very first prototype of what would become the Stinger was 11'9" it had a fairly traditional long boat hull design with a little more bow rocker and a little bit of flatness under the seat.  After working our asses off to get this one ready we hammered out some prototypes just in time for the Lord of the Fork race on the Russell Fork river in Kentucky.  In fact I loaded the van and met Toby McDermott and John Grace late in the evening with, hot out of the oven protos, so they could drive through the night and race the next morning.  Toby won the race and we were pretty excited about that.

Van load.

Notice the frost on the boats.  Its race seaon!

The day after that I got a few folks together and paddled the Green for the first time in the Hungee.  The first float is always nerve racking but it came out great.  It was very predictable, stable, and far faster than anything we were paddling at the time.  The competition at the time was the Tornado, the first proto of the Green Boat, and a proto boat from Waves Sport called the Momentum.  We seemed to be in the realm with those guys but after that very first day I knew that there was more that could be done.  My actual thought was "this is too easy to paddle, surely we can go faster and hang it out on the edge more".

The next year i decided to really push it and see what would happen.  I added 8" in length, only on the stern of the boat.  Anything that I would have added to the bow wouldn't have been in the water so its affect on speed would have been minimal but that 8" in essence represents a boat 16" longer.  So in a way the Stinger has a water line of 13' 1" boat but by keeping the bow shorter my theory was that it would be easier to move around rocks and potentially help with resurfacing, and keep me from pitoning off Sunshine.

Once again paddling away from the beach that first time was a little nerve racking.  I just wasn't sure that a boat that asymmetric was going to turn quickly enough.  Some of the team paddlers thought I might be a little crazy.  The amazing part about that design change was the speed.  Adding that extra length made it into a rocket.  My favorite feeling was the first time skipping through the pools at the bottom of the slides in the race course.  The extra speed carried momentum easily.

In 2008 Adriene tied for her first win of the Green Race.  Obviously there were great paddlers paddling the boats but they were all moving up the ladder in placements of the race so it felt like the boat changes were making a difference.  To fund the first Stingers we sold some of our prototypes to the public and they were obviously a big hit.  We couldn't make enough of them and people lined up on a waiting list to buy the boats used by racers.  That first Stinger was fast but it was also a bear to control so over the next year I skeemed on what sort of changes I wanted to make.  The main thing I wanted to focus on was maintaining the speed but if I could also make it easier to paddle that would be awesome.  I made subtle tweaks to the hull making it slightly flatter and rolling the bow edges under the boat so that they wouldn't hit quite as hard.

In 2009 we had 4 boats out of the top 6 in mens.  Adriene won again with a record time breaking run and breaking the 5 minute barrier.  Keith Sprinkle took the hands paddles class.

In 2010 5 of the top 6 were in Stingers and Mike Dawson and Isaac were at the top.  Tad Dennis won the C-1 and Keith Sprinkle won hand paddle.

Each year I would do small changes.  After 2010 we did a small deck volume increase and flattened the hull a little more.

2011 Isaac won the race and Eric Deguil pulled into 3rd and Adriene won again.

2012  was a crazy year because of the high water.  The gage was reading 12 inches plus and that proved to be fast and wild.  Mike Dawson crushed the course record.  Isaac came in third and Eric finished up the top 5.  John Grace was 6th with his fastest time ever.  Adriene won and Jordan took C-1.  Just before this years race I did some more small changes to the design adding more flat hull and more deck volume to the ends of the boat for surfacing.  All the team folks agreed they didn't want me to change it any more.  With that in mind we sent the model off to the mold maker to finally make a production mold that racers across the country had been asking us to do for 6 years.  Automatic for the People!

Now everybody gets to go fast and do big enders!

Here is a few Stinger Videos.  https://vimeo.com/album/2510310



Later
Shane

The Green River at 16"

Its not that different just a little more padding

Well now that I found this little nest of forgotten footage I might as well keep going.  Adriene and I got out on the river last winter at 16".  I was testing out one of the early protos of the Stomper 80.  It was a fun day just the two of us out there.  We didn't see a soul.

To me the river is actually easier and more fun at this level, except Gorilla of course.  The whole thing is just softer.  The boney rocks and slides that beat you up daily at normal flows are well padded and the extra juice makes it more splashy and bouncy.  Yes there are a few holes that become a bit more disconcerting but over all it makes the river easier.  The best examples of that are Go Left, Zwicks, and Sunshine.  At Go Left you can start to run down the entire left side of the whole rapid which makes it a direct line rather than having to paddle out on the dome and turn hard to run the slots at the bottom of the rapid.  In this video I run the sneak and Adriene comes down the Left Left line.  Just watch the log its pretty exposed at 16 and gets better as you go up.  At Zwicks you can run right of the top hole which takes this one from being one of the tougher rapids to being one of the easier.  You can't help but run out over the shallow slide.   At Sunshine as the levels get over 16 inches you can just run straight off the middle and pretty much clear the center rock.  Adriene ran straight and I ran the right line.  I should have run the straight line because I did flip over.   Gorilla is a beast and it gets really beastly as the water goes up.  We walked it.

Going Direct at Go Left

The down side to the river being this high or higher is that when things do go wrong they go wrong really quickly and in a much worse way.  Its going to be a long time before you can pull your boat out of the river if you swim and it may be a rapid or two before you can swim yourself to shore if you aren't aggressively swimming.  So if you are thinking about running this river at higher flows make sure you know the lines well and know you can deal with the issues that can arise.  If you have that covered this can be some of the best runs on the river you will ever have.

Oh and don't forget about Hammer Factor.  When the water levels rise the bad ass paddlers that are on this river at hi flows aren't worried about Go Left or Sunshine.  They are pinching a loaf about Hammer Factor.  Its big, nasty, and it gives grown boys and girls nightmares.

The Pit in Hammer Factor

Here is the video from the day.

The Green Race is coming...so lets make a new Liquidlogic race boat!

With just a couple weeks before the Green Race Woody and I decided to make another version of the Remix 100.  We are calling it the Remix Stinger.  A boat designed to go as fast as possible down the Green.  I met up with a group of our fastest racers and talked about what sort of changes we would like to make.  We paddled the 100 and a few other raceboats to compare styles and performance and we came up with a plan.  The Remix 100 was arguably the fastest of the race boats in a straight line but it is a little more challenging to maintain your line.  So we decided to attack two areas of the boat.  One I wanted to make it significantly faster and see if we could handle it, and two I wanted it to track better but not limit the ability to turn as needed.

Here are the finished boats after two 14 hour days for Woody and I of molding and outfitting with the help of John Grace, and Eric "Butter Grab Handle" Hurd.  Notice 6'4" Woody Callaway standing next to the 12'5" Remix Stinger.  The stats are 12'5" long, and 23.5" wide, and somewhere around 100 gallons would be my guess.  As far as design changes go.   I added 9" inches of length in just the stern end of the boat so in reality you could say that its like adding 18" of length to the boat because usually you would add length both bow and stern for balance but what we wanted for this boat was the speed of a long stern but the maneuverability of the shorter bow moving through the drops.    I also worked on the entry of the bow through the water by tucking the chines under the bow a little more on this version of the boat.  The idea behind the pintail and tucked bow chines was to make this version track harder while moving through the cross currents and hammering across the short flat sections of the race section on the Green.  Basically we wanted to make a boat that had the potential to go faster than anything has gone before on the Green.  After some serious calculations I think this boat is 9.654% faster than anything else on the river.  :)

I really like the fact that this boat was made for one single purpose to go fast on the Green and after doing the work to make it happen the first water that all of these boats will touch is the Green. I have to tell you I was a little nervous when we first slid into the water.  I knew the boat would be fast but you never know for certain how it will perform in in the rapids.  So there were lots of questions going through my head as I slid into the water.   The questions of speed was answered immediately by how far the boat glided out away from shore.  As we moved downstream John and I smiled about the speed and got more and more confident with each rapid about how the boat handled.  By the end we all bombed off Sunshine and raced all the way out to the takeout.

Here are all the photos.

First Day on the Green in the Remix 100

Well while Toby and Robin were getting ready for their practice runs in the new boat. I was walking down to the put in of the Green. All the way down to the water I was thinking to myself, "I hope this boat doesn't suck", "I hope I don't smack myself on a rock today", "I wonder if 23 1/2" is really wide enough to be stable", "I hope the bow is as up as I think its going to be", "I hope its fast", "I wonder if I am going to be able to make the turn". I mean cause when it really gets down to it I haven't designed a boat even close to this length. The longest thing I have done or helped with was the Remix or Whip-It and Whiplash in whitewater. So really as I was walking down I was just hoping that my educated guesses were going to be close. It really isn't until you float it out on the water and feel the balance yourself, well at least for me, that you really know what you have. So it was with great relief that I slid in from shore and felt the stability and then the glide while cruising down through the warm up water that I was relieved of most of my questions and worries.

Then I got to Frankenstein and proceeded to run the race line and go straight into the rock instead of missing it to the river left side. No damage to boat or body but it was a friendly reminder that the boat I was paddling was not the Remix 79 or Jefe Grande. Just a little bit longer.

My second run through Franks was much better as you can see I actually have a little angle going the right way.

Adriene and Billy styled Go Left like champs while I whimpered down the sneek the first day.

 Adriene fired up the Flying Squirrel line on the approach to Gorilla. She proceeded to go direct and ace the whole thing. I on the other hand wasn't so sure and my doubts made me pull hard on a boof stroke so I ended up in the eddie.

Billy airing out the Flying Squirrel line.

Me being happy I made the eddie.

But then once I did get turned around and lined up it was a beautiful thing to come flying off the pad with that much speed and I skipped right through the speed trap. I hope I can do that on Saturday.

Billy running the Groove Tube.

Adriene out on the dry line at Groove Tube.

Ahhh safe in the cave. Damn that thing looks long in that picture.
Thanks to Polk for taking the photos.

By the time I got off the river the folks up in Kentucky were probably in the midst of the race. I waited for several hours for the team to get out in the world where cell phone coverage exists. They gave a call and let me know that both Toby and Robin had managed to maintain their titles as Lords of the Fork. So that was awesome and I hadn't even swum once during my run on the Green. All in all it couldn't have gotten any better. Nice day.

Later
Shane

The Birth of the Remix 100

This is the Remix 100

Hey everybody I thought you might like to see the process I went through to create the Remix 100. I used a slightly different process than normal so I could do it very quickly and at as little expense as possible. I have made a few boats on my own using this method and it works great if you ever want to try to make your own.

I based the Remix 100 off of the Remix 69

I used the Remix as a starting point because it has a good base speed and controlable shape and then tweaked it to make it faster. The main things I changed were obviously length taking it from 9 feet to 11'9" and then from 26" wide to 23 1/2". I also dropped the stern rocker and narrowed the chimes a bit to keep adding speed. I kept the hull flatness from the center of the boat to the stern for a couple reasons. The biggest reason was planing out from the bottom of the slides or any rapid for that matter. Once you come off the slides you fly out across the pool for a great glide in this boat. The bow is raised a bit and beefed up a touch for punching through stuff and the bow deck is very crowned so it will surface quickly. The stern deck is fairly flat so that you still get the watermelon affect out of holes or melting situations.



Here is the time line for the boat.

Friday October 12th

We finally decided that we were going to make the Remix 100 for the race. Fortunately I had done some work on the idea in a computer so I wasn't starting from scratch. I finished up the basic design shape and rushed the files to the print shop before they closed for the weekend. The files I had printed out were cross sections of the design. I took the cross sections and traced them out on foam so that I could cut the sections out of 4" thick foam and then began cutting them out and gluing them together. If you did it yourself at home you could draft out the cross sections by hand and use regular insulation foam that you can get at a hardware store.

Once we decided to do the boat I knew that I really wanted to get them done in time for Toby and Robin and the whole LVM crew to be able take them to the Russell Fork but that only gave me two weeks to get it all done.

Saturday October 13th

Lots of cutting out sections and gluing. And of course a quick run on the Green.

Sunday October 14th

I put all the sections together on the frame and let them set for the evening, and ran the river. Its the weekend after all.

Monday October 15th

Alan and I started the process of sanding in the basic shape of the deck. When I am doing this I use everything from a chainsaw to a tiny piece of 1/2" dowel to make the shapes I want. Once the basic shape was finished I started laying out all the recesses, cockpit areas, wall braces, drain plug, grab bar, and any deck detail lines.

Tuesday October 16th

Got most of the deck detail finished and sprayed the deck with a sanding primer which allows me to sand the boat dowm to a fine finish. It takes a few coats to get the boat all even and super smooth.

Wednesday October 17th

Still working on the deck and Alan began making the cockpit rim. At this point the boat looks like its almost done but it takes forever to get the final details all polished and smoothed.

Thursday October 18th

Flip the boat over and start working on the hull. First cutting away all the excess material and then sanding down to the cross sections. Then its the spray and sanding process again.

Friday October 19th

Sanding lots and lots of sanding. At this point if you were doing a boat for yourself you could just glass over all the foam once you have it all sanded out. Then dig out the foam so you can get in and presto magico you have a boat.

Saturday October 20th

Started waxing the model in preparation for making mold with which we will make the limited run of Remix 100s. I also attached the cockpit rim.
Got a run in on the Green while the Wax dried.

Sunday October 21st

Started working on the mold and started getting nervous about running the Green in an 11' 9" boat.

Monday October 22nd

Making the mold.

Tuesday October 23rd

Making the mold.

Wednesday October 24th

Drive to plant in Greensboro NC and get the mold ready to go in the oven first thing Thursday morning.

Thursday October 25th

Make boats all day.

Friday October 26th

Make and assemble boats all day. I left the plant around 7pm and headed for Asheville where the LVM crew was waiting for me so they could load up and head for the Russell Fork Race. I also got REALLY nervous about my first long boat run since back in the day. Met the boys in Asheville at 10:00pm and headed home to dreams of flying off Gorilla in a nearly 12 foot long boat.

Saturday October 27th

Toby and Robin won the Lord of the Fork race and I didn't break my neck on the Green.
Here is the link to the Russell Fork Race Blog. Theres lots of good photos.
http://www.russellforkrace.blogspot.com

Later
Shane

ps I just updated this with better pictures from the time.  Now this boat is called the Stinger and is 8" longer.