Nick wrote; > > The reason I ask is I am working with a grad student who is looking > to do some testing on this subject. We are currently discussing the > conditions to investigate. He wants to find out how strong the > materials need to be, to be "strong enough". > A challenging project, Nick. Just getting past the "strong enough" part would challenge Solomon. (Nick already knows this and I mention it only to suggest that he has probably already given this a lot of thought). For example, any boat that survives to die of old age would qualify as "strong enough" but we might consider any boat that fails "not strong enough". At a local outfitters they have two canoes. One has served for over five years in their rental fleet. They estimate that their average rental canoe gets over 100 days of use every year by all types of paddlers, for better or worse. They now have it for sale and it will make someone a very nice, inexpensive canoe for many more years of use. The other boat will get sent to the dump after only a few weeks of use. The boats are identical in model and construction. Strong enough or too weak? People explored Canada in birchbark and wood canoes long before we had SAR but today anyone not using a poly, aluminum or Royalex canoe runs the risk of getting labeled as "stupid" or "irresponsible" or worse. Maybe we need a study of whether paddlers are strong enough mentally to stay out of trouble. If they pass they can use any damned thing they like. The rest have to stay home and watch extreme sport on TV. :-) Cheers, John Winters *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - All postings copyright the author and not to be reproduced/forwarded outside PaddleWise without author's permission Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Thu Oct 12 2000 - 05:49:25 PDT
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