Kevin wrote; >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. This does not seem to be a universal rule since many wave skis are round bottom and surf extraordinarily well. Some hard chined boats are positively dangerous when surfing. In short, it is not whether a boat has chines or not that defines how it handles but how it handles that defines how it handles. >Rudders do literally >nothing in these condition because 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. There are some boats where this is not the case. Particularly shorter boats. I think the Kiwis and Aussies have good experience with boats with rudders in rough conditions. Of course, having a rudder does not mean it is the only way to steer the boat. leans and control strokes can be used to augment the rudder and vice versa. > >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". This too may vary with boat design. Boats are systems and rarely does one feature cause a result that cannot be compensated for somewhere else. For instance, one can achieve directional stability with skegs, rudders, low Block coefficients, narrow waterline beam, and large negative profile coefficient values and any combination of the lot. > >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. This is an example of why controllability seems to be a better word to use since my experience suggest that many forgiving boats are quite controllable in surfing conditions. I can think of no reason why controllability and a forgiving nature are mutually exclusive even thought that may be the case for some boats. I know this sounds like nit picking but absolute statements about what features do what and when can be highly misleading. What Kevin says may be true (and I suspect are true) about the boats he has paddled but they may not apply to all boats. 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 Tue Oct 06 1998 - 11:30:56 PDT
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