wayne steffens wrote: > ...<snip>... > But I must take issue with part of his journal, because I have nothing > better to do right now. Please click on May 2 for his journal entry for > that day. > ...<snip>... > Photos 5-8) Here we see him paddling out into the ship canal in the (and I > quote), "8-10 foot swells with 3-4 foot chop". Ok, maybe the hug from > Monica had his head spinning a bit, but come on! > ... This common tendency to overestate the height of waves has led to the development of what some of us refer to as "standard reporting height", which is the actual height multiplied by a fudge factor. This fudge factor is usually about 2, but among modest paddlers it might be as low as 1.67, or--for certain immodest groups--as high as 3. (We are working on a common standard.) Among other things, this helps to explain how one's fellow paddlers can refer to "4-foot waves" on a day when the waves are never too high to see over. They are not lying--they are simply using "standard reporting height". Another tendency is to diminish the wave heights that others have experienced when looking at their photos or videos. One might, for example, describe the sea state in the above photos as "sea rippled". :-) Then again, what do you expect from a mere *lake*? (Yea, yea--I've heard of the Edmund Fitzgerald. She must have been seriously overloaded...) Dan Hagen *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.gasp-seakayak.net/paddlewise/ ***************************************************************************Received on Thu Aug 27 1998 - 00:11:39 PDT
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