Re: [Paddlewise] What is rough weather performance?

Jerry,
While paddling following seas, kayaks have the most difficulty tracking,
and also have a tendency to broach when surfing. Hard chines really help
improve tracking and control broaching because the chine grips the water
in the wave face better than a rounded bottom. Rudders do literally
nothing in these condition beause they are literally out of the water a
lot of the time when the waves reach even a medium height. Skegs work
better than rudders beause they are further from the end of the boat that
is lifted up.

For beginning to intermediate paddles, hard edges have a tendency to
"catch" water more furing turns and in beam seas, and therefore increase
the likely hood of capsize. For an expert, this is not a problem at all.
Also, I think the Tern has less initial stability than the Coho, which
combined with problem above is what I called "twitchiness". Of course
twitchiness can be a benefit to a beginner/intermediate who is keen to
hone his/her skills -- this combination often produces what I call
"inverted positive feedback".

Forgiveness is the opposite of twitchiness in my book, which means that I
think the Coho is very forgiving to lack of expert level skill in rough
water. This sacrifices a little bit of high performance in surfing that an
expert could take advantage of with the Tern, but even so, the Coho is
still in the upper echelon of performance compared to most sea kayaks.

I define Performance as how responsive to leans and rudder strokes a kayak
is when surfing a wave compared to my flat bottomed whitewater kayak. Yes,
this is a tough scale of measure, and it basically dooms me to some
measure of disappointment, but at least I haven't compromised my
standards. :) Regardless, surfing any wave in any kind of kayak is the
ultimate expression of personal freedom and joy... at least to me.

Any "twitchy" boat that weathercocks is a poorly performing boat.

Well, I hope that clears things up. Cheers,
Kevin

On Sat, 3 Oct 1998, Gerald Foodman wrote:

> K. Whilden wrote (in another context):
> >The Coho is one of the
> >smoothest rough water boats I have ever paddled, and I expect the Tern
> >will be similar. I also expect the Tern to have better performance while
> >surfing wind waves and to hold an edge better in following seas. The hard
> >edge will probably make it less forgiving than the Coho, but probably not
> >significant for a good paddler. IMO performance is more important than
> >forgiveness, and in general a twitchier boat only feels twitchy for a
> >short while until skills grow to accomodate the boat.
> 
> What exactly do you mean by performance of a sea kayak in following seas?
> Is it  just  speed down weather?  If so, how would you measure it?  Isn't
> ease of handling while surfing wind waves the same thing as "forgiveness"?
> When you say that the Coho is smooth in rough water, isn't it forgiveness
> you are talking about, and isn't that good?  Is there any advantage to
> twitchiness per se?  Could you not have both good and poor performing
> twitchy boats?
> 
> Seeking kayak wisdom.
> 
> Jerry
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 

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