"Does anyone have any feel for how much load such tethers must take?" In the case of paddle tethers it must take whatever load the paddle itself can take. With either paddle or personal tethers the loads will equal whatever force is required to suddenly accellerate the mass of your body, moving against water resistance, pulled by a lunging object weighing 100 to 200 pounds (for a loaded single). The lunging kayak could have hundreds of pounds of water pressure acting on it. Because of the hammer-blow like nature of the forces that might act on this tether if you and your boat are thrown in differrent directions I would make a wild guess at thousands of pounds of force (momentarily). I would not be surprised if the forces involved can be similar to the forces involved in leader falls. Certainly it would not be overdoing it to use gear as strong as climbers use to make a personal tether. Sailors, expecting to be dragged through the water by a multi-ton boat, use very strong tethers. This kind of tether could snap a light paddle shaft in half easily. Does this sound right to someone who knows more specifics about the physics of this problem? Nick Lyle *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Tue Sep 14 1999 - 08:57:08 PDT
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