On Thu, 24 Sep 1998, John Winters wrote: > > >205 cm is longish? That's 1 cm shorter than my WW paddle, which is > >longish for WW, true. > > > It seems to me that a paddle need be no longer than required for the job. > For this it should be long enough to reach the water while using effective > (and personal) biomechanical movements. From my own experience with my own > boat and using my own style my own paddle appears to me about 5 cm too long > since the paddle is immersed about 2-3 cm below the point where the shaft > meets the top of the blade. I keep reading and hearing more and more about the need for short paddles. My first paddle was about 225, and my new one is 220. (I'm 5'3", my boat is 22 inches wide.) Around here - the Chesapeake Bay area, roughly - none of the folks selling gear stock paddles as short as 220, much less shorter. And it seems that the major commercial paddle makers - at least the ones whose literature I've looked at - don't even make anything shorter than 220, except for a few paddles intended for children. What gives? Are tastes changing on paddle length and the manufacturers aren't keeping up? Is everyone supposed to special order their paddles? Or buy long ones and cut them down? For that matter, how does one even try out a paddle as short as 200 (aside from a Greenland paddle, they are usually shorter) since stores don't seem to stock them? Am I missing something here? Joy Hecht Arlington VA *************************************************************************** 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 Sep 24 1998 - 19:29:19 PDT
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