Who is Eddyline...

It was 1971. Tom Derrer was a whitewater junkie, fresh out of college, and broke. It was spring and he was dreaming of sitting in a kayak in a wild river, rather than an office cubicle in an Engineering company. So, he made the only sensible choice. He built himself a kayak.

Tom found a source of fiberglass and rented a kayak mold. After showing off his new boat, his friends, and their friends, and then people he'd never met, asked him to build them a boat. After a summer of building kayaks in his back yard, he rented shop in downtown Boulder and Eddyline was born.

The kayak market in Boulder was tiny, to say the least. In a phone call to his old paddling friend Werner Furrer Sr.in Seattle, who had designed kayaks for his family, destiny arrived. They decided to pack up and move Eddyline to Seattle to build Werner's kayaks. Intent on making better whitewater kayaks, Tom learned about vacuum bagging. Their first kayak was vacuum bagged epoxy and s-glass, weighing a mere 13 lbs, when the standard was 30 lbs. It fueled Tom's lifelong passion to pursue the highest quality and technology in kayak design and construction.

As he satisfied his thirst for slalom competition, first descents and class V river running, a wonderful thing happened. Tom took his first ocean kayak trip to the wild west coast of Vancouver Island, Canada. For a few brief hours that afternoon, in big waves and gray skies, Tom became an Eskimo. Forever.

By 1978, he was designing his own sea kayaks. On a trip Tom led in the Broken Islands off the British Columbia coast, the love of his life, Lisa, appeared. A year later Tom took her to one of the most romantic places he had ever been by kayak, Kyuquot Sound on the West Coast of Vancouver Island. But romantic it was not, so stormy they couldn't paddle, hiding in a small rock canyon, their kayaks tied to trees to keep them from blowing away. Nonetheless, Tom hiked Lisa to a tall pinnacle on top of the island in 60 knot winds to pop the question. She said yes, and they've been partners in life and business ever since.

When their daughter Anna arrived, they were inspired to design their first "family" kayak, the Grand San Juan. They created a kayak that could comfortably carry the three of them, and then the four of them when Laura came along. It kept them all on the water until the girls could paddle solo, which led to even more designs.

Two decades later, by choice, Eddyline remains a family company, focused on quality, rather than quantity. Tom still designs all the kayaks himself. Lisa works right next to him. And their staff, whom they work with daily, have become a part of their family. But the Eddyline family is bigger than just them. Their small size enables them to treat their customers as family too, allowing them to communicate personally with them. And in return, their passion for paddling continues to educate and inspire Eddylin.

The Eddyline family continues to grow, and we invite you to join it.

Happy paddling!