Ralph wrote; >I know your paddling background is canoeing. Is it possible that you >are using a kayak paddle the way I see many canoeists do? They tend to >treat the kayak paddle as an elongated canoe paddle with the upper part >of the shaft almost perpendicular to the water when the lower blade is >immersed. The flatter you keep a kayak paddle, the longer it generally >has to be. But using a paddle in a near vertical position means you >don't need much paddle length. I know a lot of advocates of short >paddles for kayak touring. I don't recall any, even the most die-hard, >using a 205 cm paddle. Yes, I do use a more upright stroke. This hits on the kind of thing I was talking about re: biomechanics. Jennifer Joy and I had a good discussion on this regarding what influences what. Do people use long paddles because it is better or them to paddle with a flat stroke or do they use a flat stroke because they have long paddles. I have no answers to that one. We often read about people liking long paddles (by long I would say in excess of 210 CM as an arbitrary cut-off although another dimension is welcome) while also reading about people liking short paddles (under 210 cm). Why the difference? As I mentioned, the answer may surface from what I am currently reading about psychokinetics. Dan's comments on whitewater paddles are interesting and worth some thought. Cheers, John Winters Redwing Designs Specialists in Human Powered Watercraft http://home.ican.net/~735769/ *************************************************************************** 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 Sat Sep 26 1998 - 04:49:01 PDT
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