[Paddlewise] Mystic Experience - also Kinetic Touring & XTI

Does anyone have any experience using Lendal's Mystic bladed paddle?
If so, what were your thoughts on its down wave performance (short wind chop
surfing)?
And what length is / was the stick?
Straight or Crank Shaft?

The reason for asking is I just received a spec. order Mystic for storm paddling
and surfing.  Though it was ordered in Straight shaft, it came Crank and will
thus be returned.
When I first tried the Mystic, I was very impressed with both the feel of the
paddle during bracing, sculling, rolling, strokes, draws, and bow / stern
ruddering and pries, and also its power as (by my rough calculation) it has more
surface area than the Archipelago, Nordcapp, and Powermaster  (& my own
Lightning Std. Touring) blades.  But the testing ground was flat water (windless
Summer day unfortunately), with good tidal current and a bridge piling eddy to
work, and the paddle was a straight shaft 218 and felt too long, certainly for
the flat water conditions.

After a downwind / upwind test paddle yesterday in about 1' chop and 20~25 kt.
winds, it seemed that the very short 212 length may have been a problem surfing
the chop down wave.
It seemed a good paddle test in that my no skeg Anas was acting up, constantly
trying to broach out and weathercock upwind despite liberal edging and
preemptive ruddering.  Once the boat began broaching, I found I could not
effectively stern rudder (up wave side) back down wave without stretching much
further back over the rear deck than I'm used to (or would feel comfortable in
bigger, faster, bumpier conditions) which drastically reduced the amount of
leverage to stern pry if needed to force the boat back on course and was
probably slowing me down enough to drop off the wind waves which I would
routinely catch and hold using my Lightning.  Working the down wave side wasn't
a problem except for the fact that I couldn't come directly off a power stroke
as well in order to catch the wind wave (would've been fine in ocean surf).

Anyway, working the up wave side has never been a problem with my Lightning Std.
Touring _at_ 220, where as it seems to be a real bear with the 212 Mystic.

Was the problem with me or the new stick???

BTW, the Mystic did much better than my Lightning paddling the up wind return
trip - but what fun is that?

Also, does anyone have any experience with Lendal's Kinetic XTI (WW blade) or
Kinetic Touring paddles, especially in regards to conditions paddling?

Vince

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