We hope your offseason is going well. As we move towards our first race in April hosted by Vindura, the team here at EKI wanted to highlight some of the changes we made in order to qualify for the series and the class system. The changes were made for many reasons:

• Feedback from racers.

• Trying to correspond with race series and established national paddlesports class systems.

• Help racers feel more competitive.

• For SUP we tentatively migrated to the SUP 14 & Under class system:

  • To match with major races like Carolina Cup.

  • To streamline the field as our number of participants indicated we should combine traditional disciplines of 12'6" and 14".

2018 Kentucky Waterman Series Classes

Qualification & Rules for KWS 2018

• Racers will be assigned points according to place at the finish line — first place gets 1 point, second place gets 2 points and so on. Those who do not finish, retire or are disqualified will receive the number of racers plus one. The person with the lowest total score at the end of the season, out of four total races, will win. Racers who take part in more than four races will have the option of just keep their top 4 scores.

• Race lengths will be defined as short distance (4.5 - 7 miles), Long (7.1+ miles), and Non-series Rec/Fun races(2-4+ miles).

• There must be at least 2 racers in a particular class to qualify for the series.

We’re so excited to host the second year of the Kentucky Waterman Series, a project that helped get over 400 racers out on the water in 2017! 

A new thing is if you're intending to race the series this year you can register craft here.