My relationship with the Critical Mass (CM) did not start off very well. Some of you who may have read my previous kayak reviews may remember that I am a very high performance oriented paddler, aging but, still placing a lot of importance on precision handling, light weight and all around high performance. I had, in previous occasions, heavily criticized a couple of creekers and manufacturers for their apparently deceptive advertising when their claimed boat weights and the actual measured weights were not even in the same ballpark.

DR does not advertise weight or volume for the CM, only that it is "XL". I was prepared for a heavy kayak, after all this is (as far as I know) the longest modern creeker on the market and possibly one of the largest volume. I know that manufacturers must build them like tanks as so many boaters are extremely hard on their equipment and many regions have rivers and creeks that tend to be very shallow and hard on hulls as well.

Still the weight of the CM surprised me. Right off the delivery truck it moved the scale all the way to 52 lbs. I immediately emailed Corran about the weight and he explained it to me that this was simply a matter of mathematics. A boat this size will have at least 16 Kg of plastic going into it, plus accessories and, there you go! So, I guess we're approaching the max. practical size of a creek boat; not defined by its actual length and volume but, rather, by its practical weight, that is, the weight a paddler is willing to move around.

Next, I tried to rationalize the weight issue. My math worked this way:

If you are a 120 lbs person paddling the lightest creeker on the market (40lbs) you are carrying and moving 33.33 percent of your body weight.
If you are a 165 lbs person paddling a medium sized creeker on the market (45lbs) you are carrying and moving 27.27 percent of your body weight.
If you are a 210 lbs person paddling the largest creeker on the market (52lbs) you are carrying and moving 24.76 percent of your body weight.

OK but, I am 195 lbs so, with the CM I am moving 26.67 percent of my weight, nearly the same as a 165 lbs person paddling an average 8' creeker. I suspect that given the performance of the CM there will be many people in the much lower body weight ranges electing to paddle this boat.

Following all this rationalizing, I hired a team of sherpas and mules to haul the CM to the river put-in and I actually was ready to give it a try. Poking around the big boat I found that DR had made a number of improvements as compared to the early Mafia. The stern hatch is now secured by a single buckle and strap. Simple and bulletproof. The center front pillar is gone, replaced by a "bow-ring" that provides support to the deck structure and makes for huge and free legroom. The Mafia's small cockpit has been replaced by a very large one that make you feel like that you can just walk in and out of the boat with ease. The grab-loops are actually functional on this boat and each of them (4) has a pair of stainless D-rings attached for rescue purposes. The stern comes with the same hatch, something that I have really grown to like in my Mafia. The arrangement provides not only built-in flotation that float bags do not reliably provide (they tend to get sucked out in holes) but also, incredible strength to the rear deck as shown when I dropped my Mafia during a portage last year and it pinned against a logjam with the full force of the Class IV rapid pounding against the submerged boat for over an hour. It did not collapse or deform the least.

An emergency breathing tube and valve arrangement is routed from the sealed hatch area under the seat. This, in case of a nightmare scenario of getting trapped underwater. It provides approximately 10 minutes worth air supply. It is a two-way breathing valve where the user can both breath in and expel air without removing the valve from the mouth. With some of the pinning incidents of late, that tube looks more and more reasonable.

Aesthetically the CM has interesting raised plastic detail works on its sides and deck. They do provide additional stiffness while those bow gills are making the boat look like a big shark out for a cruise.

Once sitting in the boat the paddler can adjust the very retentive backband and the bulkhead with new, improved ratchets. They are a welcome improvement over last year's Mafia ratchets that required multi finger adjustment.

On the water the first thing to notice was how loose the hull is. Just doing a casual sweep stroke on flatwater spins the boat on a dime with hardly any sidewall resistance. No surprise, after all the hull shape is derived from the Mafia's which must be one of the loosest one on the creeker market. Yet, there is at least one significant difference. Once under way I could not believe how directionally stable the CM was. The Mafia, with its extreme rocker and short hull length is superbly maneuverable in the proper hands but, it must be kept in-check constantly as it has a fair amount of tendency for spinning out. The CM just cruises through funny eddy lines and swirls with far less corrections, yet, it spins on demand. Mind you, the response is not as instantaneous and razor sharp as the Mafia's but, this is a boat nearly a foot and a half longer and 10+ lbs heavier! Also, the top hull speed of the CM is considerably higher than the much shorter Mafia's. The Mafia reached its functional flatwater top speed at relatively small muscle efforts. Beyond that you needed exponentially larger input to fractionally increase the speed. The CM keeps its bow down and glides along at much higher speeds, given the same effort. Yet, both the Mafia and the CM will surprise you with their hull speeds on white water, given their bow design that introduces minimal resistance to the oncoming white water, waves, holes, etc.

The CM rolls almost as easy as an old school boat. A nice surprise from such a high volume creeker. The standard I use for judging rolling ease is to lay myself on an extended sculling brace sideways into the water with my head just underwater. Boat is allowed to roll over its side to where the bottom is mostly facing the sky. From that position I attempt to brace/roll back. An easy to roll boat, like the CM, will snap back so hard that it almost tips me over the opposite side. Medium-hard to roll is when I need a strong push off the brace to bring the boat back and my paddle may begin to dive in the process. With boxy, hard to roll boats I may not be able to right the boat from that position but, have to tip over completely and do a full momentum roll routine.

Unfortunately, at this time of the year all we have here in CA is some class III waters. Still, it has some pretty good wave actions, some ledge drops with sticky holes and lots of opportunities to ferry across fast white water and nail various sized eddies. I'll update this review when the rains give us some rivers with higher difficulties and gradients. For now this should simply give a taste for this boat.

The stability (primary AND secondary) is exceptional. The hull shape under the seat is flat, gently beveled and rounded into the sidewall. It provides the best of two solutions. A flat bottom for great primary stability and rounded off edges for predictable and minutely adjustable lean control as one moves across eddy lines. I am not in favor of using hard edges on river runners and particularly not on creekers. With their necessary box shape they basically want to ride flat, making minute lean adjustments more of a challenge. They are also harder to roll due to the boxy profile and sharp edges and, there is always the dreaded edge hanging up on rocks issue. Also, I do not subscribe to the "myth" that hard edged boats somehow carve better eddy turns. One does not so much carve eddy turns in creekers but, snaps into eddies, using the current flow directional differences.

The CM goes through turbulence with ease, floating high and giving a very high degree of confidence. Purposely turning into boiling eddy lines did not upset the hull the least. I was able to remain relaxed without any need for corrective bracing (slap bracing). The very large stern volume keeps the boat level all the time, preventing that stern-sinking feeling that one gets in smaller volume boats when stuck on eddy lines. I intentionally selected the steepest routes over the ledges into the deepest holes, just to see how the boat handled going under water and resurfacing. It came through entirely predictably seemingly not even slowed by the holes that back-ender many boats and boaters. It made me feel confident to where I'd be wiling to try punching some real butt-kicking ledge holes out there. Probably going to get my rear-end kicked, playing Tarzan out there but, what the heck...

The widest grin on my face came with my upstream ferries across the river. I was making moves that I could not even dream about in my previous creekers of late (Mafia, Jefe, Huka, H3). Given the same slicey bow design (the best feature of the Mafia, IMHO) the CM's ferry angle is extremely controllable and its ability to reach across white water reminded me to the good old days of long boats. Well, OK, this is only a 9' boat that still won't match the hull speed of a good 4 meter kayak but, the speed increase over the 8' crowd is significant. Enough to put a wide grin on my face and to make me ferry side-to-side all the way down the whole river. Also noticed was how much less draft the CM had over the Mafia. I was floating clearly over shallows where the Mafia with its shorter, deeper riding hull touches rocks every time.

After a full day of hard paddling (making dual runs) and moving the big shark, my nerve damaged, injury stricken shoulders are certainly in full protests as of this moment

At the end of the day my opinion had changed regarding this boat. Prior to trying it I emailed the boat's designer, Corran Addison, and told him that the weight issue really bummed me out and I was not going to paddle a kayak this heavy. Period!!!

Wrong! People who want to demo this boat will have to pry it loose from my hands with some pretty hefty crowbars. I liked it THAT much. Weight or not, you really owe it to yourself to test one and if there is a better creeker on the market today buy it by all means, you'll be a happy person, all the same. Besides, I am hearing from others that some of the large sized creekers from competing manufacturers weight just as much, or more.

Suggestions for improvement;
I would prefer to have some kind of knee or thigh braces installed. Corran does not like those as they tend to make getting in and out of the boat more difficult. Yet, without them I feel that I need to tighten my back band and bulkhead too much so that my knees do not slip out from under the cockpit rim in cases of rolling or bracing. On the other hand, it is nice to be able to raise both knees out of the cockpit and just stand up and walk away. I could probably add some additional foam braces to better locate my knees.

I would also like to see the bulkhead's aluminum bars routed through some kind of brackets, perhaps fastened to the bow-ring, just to prevent them from floating and moving all around the boat. Right now they're held in place only by the plastic ratchet strips.

All DR boats come with a quality check list filled out. Yet, I had found a couple of places where the workmen neglected to sand some sharp plastic surfaces that were cut after coming out of the mold. The deep cut on my center finger bears a reminder to the sharpness of freshly cut plastic. Also, an assembler cross-threaded and jammed a mounting nut and bolt that I was forced to cut off with a power grinder.

Other than those it is a fantastic kayak. It is a significant step in the right direction to gain back hull speed without giving up the agility of shorter hulls. When Corran first announced his intention for building a 9' boat, I applauded the decision with the qualifier that, it had to turn and handle like a short (8') boat and not like an old school kayak.. Well done Corran! I think that the CM not only matches the agility of most 8' boats it actually betters them while providing superior hull speed and hole punching power. That is quite a feat to pull off.

Believe it, or not, I've just decided to actually pay for one to have it for my own only, outfit it the way I really want to and not have to share it with anyone, as I would have to with the present demo model. I've just emailed Corran to ship me one and have put my money where my mouth is.

Go and see if you can pry one loose from a demo center near you.