<SNIP> |If you race on a lake or slough note that water depths are important too. Anytime the |water is less than about 4x the depth of your keel, resistance increases. If you race |close to shore and you are on the shallower side, you can increase the effort required |substantially. Sometimes you have to balance this against the greater wind and waves |and current further out. To me, the difference between 3 feet depth & 1 foot depth is |like that between calm & 5 kt wind. Excellent point. And shallow water does not mean to the lake bottom, water plants also will cause you to slow down. The resitance in shallow water was mentioned in passing in a discussion last year. I had noticed that when I would round a point my speed would suddenly slow down by a couple mph. I never could figure it out. I thought I had gotten off pace, technique or the that trees were blocking the GPS signal. One lake I use frequently has almost no water plants. The other lake is infested with them, primarily because the lake has a Nuke plant that keeps the water warmer. BUT, even keeping well off the points, speed can be really knocked down because of the water plants. They are not on the surface of the water but are kept a couple of feet down by motor boat traffic but they do cause drag. The shortest way between two points may be a straight line but that may not be the fastest route...... Later... Dan *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - All postings copyright the author and not to be reproduced outside PaddleWise without author's permission Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Mon Feb 21 2000 - 08:53:05 PST
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0 : Thu Aug 21 2025 - 16:30:20 PDT