See also:
Gumotex IKs
Hybrid IKs
Do you need a deck on your IK?
Seawave

It’s the end of 2025 but there still no mention on the Gumotex website of their new decked single seater Aurion, announced in 2024 (video below), and sold for months in some European outlets at around €2400 with the new 5-year guarantee. Cool name and it looks good too – but so does the Rush 2 and so did my Seawave with the optional deck (left). Something about a deck can make a long IK look more like a sea kayak.

Positive video reviews have appeared in Europe in recent months, pre-production prototypes dished out to reliable influencers in strong IK markets, but there have been actual purchases too. Apart from above, currently most reviews seem to be videos in German, but we take what we can get here at IK&P.
Normally I’d scoot over to Laurent Nicolet’s Rivieres Nature YT channel (French Gumotex importers). They’re paddle pros not influencers, who often get new Gumboats early and shoot great vids with minimal chat, showcasing everything from the Gumocatalog from white water to sea with no piece-to-camera exposition. But so far they’ve only filmed the revised but still door-wide Swing 1 2025 (also fixed deck; their pics below), though Laurent did announce the Aurion on the French IK forum.

One chatty German video from ‘RoGa‘ offers an AI-generated English translation – ‘adjustable fruit stand with push valve … for securing pastries‘. Good to know, but other segments make sense, and you get a good all-over view of the hull, inside and out, as you do on the garden vid below by Austrian? Kayak Kev. (translate ‘closed captions’ to know what’s being said). Another vid of his bottom of the page.

Anyway, the Aurion
The Aurion (look it up) announces itself as the hybrid replacement for the possibly outgoing Framura (getting discounted right now). So like the old Solar span off the DS-floor or ‘hybrid’ Thaya, and the Seawave begat the longer hybrid Seashine, so the Framura has cloned into the Aurion.

The Framura was a boat which Gumotex always pitched as ‘the fastest Gumotex’. But as I wrote here back in 2014:
I’m not convinced the 0.2 bar Framura is that much faster than a longer, stiffer Seawave [or later Rush 2]. And I also suspect it has not been such a sales success either. Perhaps claiming the former has something to do with the latter.
Indeed I wonder if ‘fastest’ was nothing more than a marketing label for the Framura to separate it from the dumpier, also-decked Swings. Someone needs to do a drag race or time trial with all of them.

The new Aurion seems to match the Framuras LxW dims at 410cm by 75cm wide. This is actually only 3cm less than my 78cm Seawave (verified), no matter what the official dims claim. The Aurion’s payload is said to be 140kg.
Oddly, the Framura retained old-school 0.2 bar all round; low-end Gumotex pressures. The new Aurion runs 0.5 bar (7.5psi) in the dropstitch floor, and 0.25 in the sides, while gaining a kilo (17kg, same as a Seawave) and ditching floor PRVs. That will be as rigid as a Grabner (who, fyi, manage stiffness and high pressures without DS). Only half a bar in a floor is nothing for dropstitch, and anyway, DS is much better at managing excess pressure (from blazing sunshine) than vulnerable I-beams (like an air bed, see left). Along with less thick panels and of course rigidity for a negligible weight gain, this is the reason to incorporate DS in IK hulls.

Your Aurion’s DS elements aren’t just a slab of SUP board joined at the hip, like FDS IKs costing a third less, but complex hydrodynamic forms (like the X500) which partly helps explain the price. Like last year’s Seashine, the narrow floor has a shallow V, but only on the front half (with protective strake), producing a keel effect which flattens out to the back where the skeg mount sits. They claim this narrow floor helps make the Aurion 10% faster than its predecessor. As someone observed, the Aurion may be 75cm wide at the sidetubes, but it’s much less at water level which should mean less drag for a better glide.

I haven’t visualised exactly how, but the single chamber (or linked) side tubes are said to be DS at water level, but regular round tubes above, but presumably running 0.25 bar which won’t strain the DS. In this way the upper non-DS side tubes act more like stability pontoons, and many testers report the Aurion may feel tippy initially, but has good secondary stability when leaning right over (or broaching along a wave) like a proper sea kayak. My Igla had the same overall dims and was perfectly stable to me.

No one’s shown an out of the bag assembly yet, but the Aurion uses a pair of alloy supports fore and aft of the cockpit to hold the deck convex so water rolls ofF. The front one can also give something to brace knees against, as I found on my Seawave (no thigh straps needed) and supposedly, they tension the boat; holding the sides in as it flexes and opens out midway in heavy seas or rapids. You’d think the DS floor would see to that, and if these bars are anything like what my Seawave had (left), there’s a neater MYO option.

Meanwhile the seats still look crude, heavy items made (I suspect) from Nitrilon off-cuts (unlike my Seawave adaption above left). They can easily be swapped out and so can the footrest. They insist on retaining a blow-up cushion, but at least it’s now adjusted by two straps running up to the cockpit. For tensioning it’s a big improvement over the older, floor mounted set up, and you could easily replace the pillow with a piece of hard drainpipe, as I’ve done on my IKs for years (left).
With a narrower than normal IK you’d definitely want thigh straps to steady yourself, unless the front deck support brace works. Combined with a proper footrest, it all makes a huge difference to connection and control or flat or lively water.

Some people have been exorcised by the grab lines on the sides, but they’re just a safety requirement for inshore sea use in French markets. Talking of which, there’s also a rudder attachment hole on the back. Having experimented with rudders on my longer Seawave, it’s important to understand that on a kayak, rudders aren’t primarily about steering like on the QE2 liner; they’re more for compensating against crosswind drift on open water. With a rudder trimmed to one side you can paddle normally across a side wind and not have to haul hard on one arm to compensate. Very handy at sea, especially on overnight paddles where you may end up with winds you didn’t ask for.

The cockpit takes a flexible coaming rod for a proper spray skirt, at which point you have to ask, would you want a fixed-deck single seater IK? You lose all the benefits of easy entry from or by the water, just to avoid a little paddle splash, though I admit a fore deck is handy for gadgets and snacks. They you have the cleaning and drying issues, baggage loading complications and so on – all for what? In that way the similar but slightly longer and wider Rush 2 is 10% lighter, probably as cheaper (though maybe not once you buy the deck) and can take a second paddler which has proven benefits to well being.

It’s good to see Gumotex leading the way with non-PVC hybrid IKs: first the basic Thaya slab, then the more sophisticated but initially troubled flat-floored Rush models, and the half V-hull Seashine which has been copied to the Aurion, but with semi DS side tubes. Each iteration refines the Gumotex hybrid format, but at a price that’s unlikely to see it chart in the UK.