Re: [Paddlewise] Tracking

At 3:36 PM -0400 10/10/98, John Winters wrote:

>Finally, Dan mentioned that my position (advocating for the importance of
>design) was to be expected since I am a designer. I must disagree. If I
>designed a boat that was directionally  unstable I would be far better off
>to adopt the opposite stance and tell complaining paddlers that the problem
>was theirs and that everything would be fine if  they improved their
>stroke.  In fact, I would be wise to say that all the ills of paddling are
>due to paddlers and the boats are all just fine. Why, the argument works
>both ways and the designer can't lose. If you can't make the boat turn it
>is also the paddler's fault since turning is 80% paddler and only 20% boat.
>It doesn't matter what the designer does. At least 80% of all problems are
>paddler related and all boats are pretty good.  :-)

There seem to be two ways of looking at this problem: The paddler should
adapt to the boat, or the boat should adapt to the paddler. If the
boat/paddler system has trouble going straight, either the boat design is
fine and it is the paddler that is wrong, or the paddler is good enough but
the boat has problems. A perfectly good boat may not track very well. Some
white water boats fall into this catagory. For the paddler to get full
benefit of this design he will need to learn more skills. For certain types
of paddling, tracking is important and in this case a boat that does not
require as much involvement from the paddler may be better.

This begs the question of whether straight tracking is important. That is a
matter of personal preference. But just because the boat is easier to
paddle in one way, does not make it easier to paddle over all. Given a
straight tracking boat, if you want to make it turn you may have to learn
to lean the boat or some other skill. So again, it comes back to skill of
the paddler. In order to achieve the full potential of the design, the
paddler will have adapt to the boat.

Is it possible to make a boat that anyone can paddle in the first 10
minutes? Probably. It would even be a high performance boat since your
metric of performance is ease of paddling. But put an experienced paddler
in the same boat he will probably be able to make it do more than the
begginer. A better paddler will make the boat higher performance - not only
is it easy to paddle but he can do more "tricks" with it. This suggest that
performance of a boat is dependant on the skill of the paddler. Regardless
of the design, a skilled paddler will make it perform better than an
unskilled one.

I doubt Clark was being scientific when he suggested 80%:20% as the ratio
of skill to design, they are just numbers that he threw out. He directed
his discussion towards tracking, but if you expand performance to
everything you can accomplish with a boat, what he says still has some
merit. For many people, one of their goals is to get better at paddling. A
higher proportion of skill relative to design suggests the paddler must
learn something to get the best results. Probably the right proportion of
skill to design is 50:50. To me, this is a boat that doesn't require more
skill than the paddler has, but can do everything he wants.

I know this is probably not what Clark meant, but lets say I were to get in
a sprint kayak, I would assume I would flip over almost immediately. By my
thinking this boat's stability would be 100% paddler and 0% boat, my
staying dry depends completely on me. Eventually my skills would evolve to
the point where I didn't have to think about staying upright. At this point
the stability would be 50:50 paddler to design at which point I would be
done learning about the boat's stability. A boat with performance which is
100% design, is one that you don't need to know anything to make it work,
while this is achievable for some aspects of performance, I don't think it
is possible to design a boat that will do everything it is capable of
without the intervention of a skilled paddler.

This leads to a definition of a high performance boat: One that is capable
of doing everything the paddler wants and probably a little more, or is
greater than or equal to 50% paddler.



Nick Schade
Guillemot Kayaks
c/o Newfound Woodworks, 67 Danforth Brook Rd, Bristol, NH 03222
(603) 744-6167

Schade_at_guillemot-kayaks.com
http://www.guillemot-kayaks.com/

>>>>"It's not just Art, It's a Craft!"<<<<



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