It’s 2014, right? Pretty incredible to be able to take the 2015 FUN for a two week trip down the Grand in 2014. Also along for the ride were several Zens, a couple Karmas, a SuperFun, a Funrunner, and a Supercharger which saw a lot of use and was a big hit. Thank you Tony for giving Mike this incredible boat for the trip and thank you all the wonderful people at Jackson Kayak for making this FUN for the trip. To say the FUN was in high demand would be an understatement and it was hard to get Mike out of the thing; he liked it that much.

My 2007 Fun was one of my most cherished boats ever but this one hands down has taken it’s place in terms of ease of use, versatility, and just plain FUN. This boat is going to have a wide appeal to a broad sector of boaters. Needless to say, I have one on order too!

Hilde

Here is what Mike has to say about it:

A thirteen day trip through the Grand Canyon was the perfect place to put the new 2015 Jackson Fun to the test.  I fit right in the middle of the specs for this boat, at 165 pounds.

The outfitting works great, as usual.  The forward/backward seat adjustment is very easy to use, and I moved my seat one position forward of center for the big water in the big ditch.  I shared the boat with other paddlers some during the trip, but ran all the big rapids in the Fun and never caught the tail, which was a pleasant surprise.  Other elements of the outfitting are also easily adjusted, such as the foot pads (add/remove foam strips), back band and hip pads. I was able to paddle over 10 full days in the new Fun and never felt any discomfort nor need for an ergonomic adjustment period, which is pretty unusual for me in a new boat.

The overall design of the boat clearly aims to provide both a solid river runner and a fun play design, and it accomplishes both surprisingly well. The 2015 Fun has good speed for its length, and also responds quickly to change of direction strokes.  This allows easy adjustments on the face of waves, by either flat spinning the hull or slicing the bow or stern through the water when desired.  The edges on the hull never caught once, and I found it stable and confident in plowing through hydraulics and swirly water at the bottom of rapids.  The slippery bottom and edges also allowed for good surfing, catching waves on the fly, spinning down the face of waves, cartwheeling, squirting on eddy lines, and all the other fun things we paddlers like to do.  Another nice feature of the new Fun is that it easily handles strong swirlies by using sweep strokes to flat spin and change direction, where other boats would be locked into one direction.

In my eyes, the real design coup of the new Fun is that it is so high on both the river runner and play scale.  Well done, designers!
Mike