On Thu, 15 Oct 1998 04:54:10 Dave Kruger wrote: > >So let's hear it, you young, strong paddlers ... was that *really* a 20 >knot head wind? What was the sea state like? > Dave, Since my wife and I just started paddling this year we have limited experience. But we did take a float trip down a section of the Kansas river a few weeks ago in strong winds. The weather forecast for the day was 25-30 mph winds from the south. Luckily most of the trip was heading east so that you could paddle along the south bank under the shelter of the bank and trees. But...there was one stretch of the river that turned and headed straight into the wind for about 2 miles. They called it "the wind tunnel". The wind was strong enough that it was blowing large dust clouds off of the sand bars (I'm talking fast moving stinging sand). Since the fetch was short the waves were only about 1 (possibly as high as 2) feet high. Some of the waves would have small whitecaps and spray. After my wife got plowed by an out of control canoe (there was about 60 canoes in the trip) we decided to sprint ahead of the canoes (admittedly most of them were novices in rented canoes (you know, take the 5-10 year old kids out for a fun day on the river like they did when they were in boy scouts as kids)). At one point as a test I stopped paddling, hunkered down over the deck to see if the 8 mph current could out do the wind. The wind won, noticeably. It did take quite a bit of effort (enough that I'm glad I only had to paddle against the wind for a short section). A bunch of the canoers ended up walking their canoes through that stretch instead of paddling. A noticeable exception was these two guys in a nice looking Old Town. They talked about paddling every year in the BWCAW and were very good paddlers. I would definitely say that was the forecasted 25-30 mph wind but I did not paddle 10 miles into it, just 2. Mel --- There are three types of people, those who can count and those who can't. -----== Sent via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----- http://www.dejanews.com/ Easy access to 50,000+ discussion forums *************************************************************************** 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 Oct 15 1998 - 06:16:22 PDT
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