ReactR: A New Era of Whitewater Kayaking

Embrace the new era of whitewater kayaking. The most progressive creek boat to hit the rapids since the 9R, the ReactR is here.

Head downriver in a way you’ve never experienced before; whether you’re dropping into a steep gorge, threading tight lines between thunderous features, or even upping your game on a local river, the ReactR leaves ordinary creek boats in its wake.

Ride higher and drier in rapids, scream into eddies faster than ever, and find your line without any limitations. This is our most innovative design and opens the doors to the world of river running for kayakers of all abilities.

Whether you’re just learning how to lift the nose over stoppers or you’re looking to clock up some serious air miles, the ReactR allows you to skip over tricky river features, not just with ease, but with style and a huge smile.

What’s more, with unmatched agility and precision, the ReactR allows you to choose your own lines. The nimble frame and responsive handling make it the ultimate tool for conquering every twist and turn the river throws your way. 

The “Pivot Hull Philosophy”

We’ve spent significant time developing an entirely new style of hull, with a perfectly positioned pivot point and two planing surfaces, one in front and another behind, which the paddler can switch between with ease. This means the boat is stable both when landing a drop on the bow and when planing out of features on the tail. You want that skip, and we’ve delivered.

The pivot point position, where the front and back rockers converge, allows you to de-weight the bow and swing it around or up over features. With your weight forward, you can feel the glide and control from the front of the boat. 

We have utilised our new pivot hull philosophy to allow the paddler to choose the kayak’s pitch in real time. This allows you to release the bow and gain ultimate mobility, but all without that tail getting bogged down or going underwater.

This is Not a Half Slice

Whether a quarter, half, or ¾, the ReactR isn’t a slicey boat, where volume has just been removed from the deck. The ReactR’s tail is not designed to be underwater, but to allow water to slide around it. Soft sidewalls above and below result in minimal pressure buildup from side currents and mean you can move when you need or want.

Design Breakdown

• The ReactR hull has been perfected to enable direction changes when flat without tripping over the tail.

• An innovative rocker profile takes sidewall pressure away from the ends of the kayak, allowing you to make last-second adjustments and carve into and, if need be, straight back out of eddies.

• The bow profile has been completely rethought from first principles to give smoother water entry, a lifting point closer to the paddler for more horizontal skips, and to allow cross currents to pass under the kayak without knocking you off your line.

• The “Pivot Hull Philosophy” allows the paddler to control the kayak’s direction at any speed.

• ⁠The ReactR’s tail design has been honed to stay on top of the water when heading downstream, but enable rapid direction changes through low-angle pivot turns while keeping your weight over the front and your forward momentum strong.

• The hull efficiently glides out of features and retains upstream speed in ferries and attainments, yet still gets out of your way quickly during boofs.

• The dynamic bow captures the flow running over it and directs it under the kayak for increased speed and optimal planing performance.

• High edges on the bow and stern mean an agile yet predictable carving experience. The paddler can transfer edge easily and fluently without feeling unstable or locked into a position.

New Ideas. New Possibilities. A New Era of Whitewater Kayaking.

The ReactR enables you to push the boundaries of what’s possible on the river, and Team Pyranha’s very own Bren Orton has already been dialling in new techniques in the kayak throughout the prototyping process.

“The ReactR opens up a whole new realm of river running; within just a few days of paddling the prototype, I’d already unlocked a new technique for whipping the kayak over wave trains! 

Following that up with some testing in Brazil, I found I could read and run rapids better than ever before because the ReactR allowed me to react and manoeuvre my kayak so quickly. I’m stoked to spend more time in it!”

This design delivers truly new possibilities. It allows the paddler to double pump, sweep the tail along the water, and boof at any angle. This precision allows for a dynamic range of options in the most technical whitewater.

The Conclusion

The ReactR is a fusion of what paddlers need and what they may have never experienced. It’s designed to give ultimate control in uncontrollable environments, leaving you free to react in the moment and embrace your instincts. This boat takes familiar principles and makes them second nature so you can focus on opportunities you may not have considered before.

The ReactR isn’t just a kayak – it’s a statement about Pyranha’s commitment to leading the charge and progressing the sport through design innovation. Its development tore up the rulebook on creek boat design and rewrote it. Get involved.

Oh, and it comes with an entirely new outfitting system, too…

Our new Elite outfitting system has been redesigned from the hull up to give you optimal control of the ReactR’s progressive hull design, but we’ll tell you more about that in this separate blog post.