In an earlier post I said; For example the comment that "....tracking is 80% paddler and 20% boat" can easily be disproved. For example, sprint canoes must track straight with minimal attention to turning. Thus, the boats are designed to do just that. In short, the boat is designed to suit the need. The same principle, when applied to sea kayaks, can produce a straight tracking boat that, when coupled with a shape that turns easily when heeled, achieves both objectives - manoeuvrability and straight tracking. More over, I suspect even Clark will agree that some boats are difficult to control and if he hasn't yet paddled one I would be happy to point him in the proper direction. :-) Dan took issue with that saying my example proved nothing regarding the relative importance of paddle technique versus hull design influencing tracking. Here I would like to elaborate so as to clear up any confusion. Imagine a boat with a hemispherical shape. Such a boat would have no directional stability and only strokes could influence its direction. For all practical purposes one could say that, for this boat, tracking derives 100% strokes from strokes and 0% from the boat. Now let us imagine the other extreme. In this case the boat might be say 26' long and roughly 18" wide. Its design might be such that it draws quite a bit of water being "V" sectioned and having a rectangular profile underwater. In short, your classic I-want-to-go-straight boat. Now, for such a boat strokes in the middle have little effect on turning and the best way to turn the boat would be by rudder acting at the end of the boat. For practical purposes tracking could be said to be 0% strokes and 100% boat. Obviously most sea kayaks will and can be anywhere between the two extremes. To further elaborate, Clark asked us to take a look at racers to learn something about short strokes. This seems to be good advice. One might pay close attention to the sprint kayak stroke that starts close to the boat and then sweeps out and away from the boat instead of being drawn straight aft. From this we might learn something about strokes and stroke efficiency. When racing sprint paddlers do not want to be bothered with steering with the paddle. As much effort as possible must go into propulsion so they use boats that track well and steer with rudders and use a stroke that produces the greatest power for a given input. Not exactly kicking back and taking it easy. Obviously this is one group of experts who see things differently. Some of you may recall that one writer pointed out a while back how he used a different power stroke for different purposes. It made a lot of sense then and still does now (at least to me). 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. :-) I only wish I could get away with that. Some of the people who buy boats expect more. 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/ ***************************************************************************
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!"<<<< *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.gasp-seakayak.net/paddlewise/ ***************************************************************************
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