C-Forum

Greetings...

Anyone out there remember what a Hydra Centaur looked like? I may have found one for sale... it's big, blue, and plastic, definitely old school, and doesn't look like a Gyramax. I thought it might be a Sage, but the owner says it might be a centre, which I"m assuming may me Centaur...

Along with that, is this a true C1, or a kayak Hydra stuffed a saddle into? Any info appreciated!

The Centaur was a "real" C-1 of about the same vintage as the Gyramax. A friend bought one after demoing it and a Gyramax on a pond, he picked it because it was easier to roll and had a nicer saddle.

Unfortunately once on the river he find it to be much lower performance than the Gyramax, and also much tippier. The hull is quite round so he never felt stable, and the symetrical hull didn't work all that well compared to the Gyra.

I know this sounds funny but at the time there was a review in Canoe Magazine that wondered if the Gyramax was too "hot" for less advanced boaters. Anyway, the Centaur would mainly be of interest if you want to complete your "fleet" and can get it real cheap.

Around this time Hydra also made a C-2 in both a 2 and 3 hole design; the 3 holer was to let you take a kid, pack gear, or use it as a C-1! A friend still takes his 2 holer out on the river sometimes, it is very stable and he can give a wild ride to less experienced paddlers on rivers beyond their present ability.

Greetings...

Thank you for the GREAT info...apparently the only writing on the boat is "John Johnson ", and it's blue plastic. Owner actually said he thought it was a "Centera"...make sense? I'll try and post a picture of it if I can. Needless to say I'm curious as to what it is...especially if it's plastic and not glass....

Hey, Adam;
the Johnson name on the boat is Tom Johnson, the designer of the boat for Hydra . Actually, Plastic Industries was the original company. Tom had come to their attention with his River Chaser kayak design for Hollowform ($129.95 out the door in 1973). Since Tom had named his new boat (kayak) "Taurus", the company then became Hydra. Beware of Greeks (Romans?) paddling boats, I guess.
The Taurus was 60 centimeters wide and they made the CENTAUR 70 centimeters wide (which was the industry standard for slalom boats at that time, apparently the early 1980s). Tom remembers both boats as being made of linear polyethylene, although he's not sure. He's 85 now and this was around 23 years ago that the boats were invented. They then asked him to make a C-2 but they couldn’t build it with the cockpits in the mold because of shrinkage (12 thousands of an inch to every inch of the boat length in the plastic itself, and, since the mold was made of aluminum, the mold itself shrank 34 thousands of an inch for every inch of boat length). So when both the mold and the plastic would cool it would cause the hull to buckle if the cockpits were in it at that time. So they offered an extruded vinyl cockpit ring that they bolted on, and this gave you the option of having offset cockpit rings as well as the third cockpit ring in the middle. At that point another company had come out with the Gemini C-2, apparently so named because Tom had named his kayak the Taurus after the zodiac sign (because his birthday and mine are on the same day in May, how cool is that?), so they had to name the C-2 the Duet.
The Centaur was a symmetrical hull, because you could then basically make a pattern for half of the mold rather than a whole one, which was less expensive. So to make it a real C-1 with the back portion wider, you would put two pieces of mini-cell foam down the center of the interior of the boat. The back piece would conform to the hull, and the front piece would be an inch or two higher than the hull so that when you jammed it into the interior, it raised the top, and shortened the width, of the front part of the boat making it a proper C-1 hull. This is what Tom had planned and maybe that's why the boat mentioned by Don Williams above didn't perform well. Tom remembers that his boat was less round than the Gyromax and therefore slightly higher performance as well as being slightly more edgy/tippy.
It's always great to talk to Tom, because getting him to stick to any one subject takes more skill than I'll ever have, so during the process I learned that he invented the Fiberglass gunstock for the AR-7, which was part of the Strategic Air Command survival kit if any pilots were shot down. You took a 22 Hornet bolt-action and stuck it inside of the stock so that it wouldn't take up space. He also bought (early '70s) two 25 ft. Old Town canoes for $325 apiece plus $75 shipping. Man, what would those cost now! He also coached the 72 Olympic kayak team in Germany, and was head honcho at the ACA for awhile.
Apparently Susan Taft’s book "River Chaser" is named after Tom's boat and has a fairly decent section regarding all of this early invention period. Has anybody read that book?
Anyway, I think he still has both a River Chaser and a Duet up at his place, and the next time I'm up there I'll take some pictures if you want. That's Tom with The Willits canoe that is on the CD that I sent you. Those pics are from his place, and apparently he has another one now that was made in 1922 with 7000 teeny tiny nails in it!
Hope this helps;
Ric Taylor

Susan Taft’s book isn't "River Chaser", but rather "The river CHASERS"
Sorry 'bout that.
RT

See what I meant..."occasionally informative" . Once I have FTP access to CBoats again I'll be putting all that up! I'll have to C what I can get that boat for, too.... I actually have access to a Duet (no one uses it, so I'm trying to convince the owner to "donate" it to CBoats...hey, it's happend once already!

Thanks again!

Thanks Space Canoe for lots of fascinating details. My friends Centaur was purchased from a shop new, but I believe it only had one pillar front and rear and they were the same size. Perhaps Hydra was slacking off on the outfitting or made a mistake, the deck was quite high bow and stern.

I actually have a Centaur hull sitting in my mother's garage in Texas (I'm originally from there, now in Mass.) which I bought from a livery for $100 way back when. Some of their hulls hadn't even had the cockpit cut out, I'm not sure how they ended up with them.

My plan was to use it to have something to paddle when I visited New Mexico at the right time of year, it hasn't happened yet. If I do ever manage it I'll keep your "shaping" strategies in mind.

No problem, Don; that’s interesting about the cockpits not being cut out. Maybe that was to protect them for shipping. I'm going up to the Kern river Festival and will hopefully run into Tom up there. If so I'll ask.
Ric