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In October 2014, Valley announced the development of the Nordkapp Forti to celebrate 40 years of Nordkapp production. From their press release - "2015 will be the 40th launch anniversary of undoubtedly the most influential sea kayak ever produced, the Nordkapp! Designed specifically for a 500 mile sea kayak expedition up the Norwegian coast, to the northern most point of Scandinavia, the Nordkapp marked the beginning of sea kayaks being designed specifically for extended recreational sea kayak trips. Whilst, in these intervening years, the Nordkapp cemented its reputation as the benchmark “Expedition” sea-kayak, there were still some who believed it had, had its day. For the kayak’s 25th anniversary it went through a major face lift, in part this was to make it more user friendly, as it had gained a reputation for being unstable, especially with lighter paddlers or those paddling predominantly unladen. This Nordkapp Jubilee, as it was called, again proved very popular but some traditionalists felt that it had lost some of the originals soul. The release of the LV, some years later, gave back the liveliness those traditionalists felt they were missing but there were still those who missed something intangible, about the original. In these past few years, whilst archiving some of Valley’s history and recording the evolution of its range, we were able to systematically look at the chronological development of the Nordkapp model. What came to light was quite revealing and has ultimately led us to produce this new 40th anniversary version! " Click here to read the full press release. (PDF). Here are some pictures of the new boat. Pictures of one of the original boats built for the 1975 "Nordkapp Expedition" are here. It is interesting to compare the boats.
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