From: "Kevin Whilden" <kevin_at_yourplanetearth.org> > Blade size does not matter, because as Matt Broze said earlier, water is a > heavy fluid and even most small blades hardly slip through the water. It's too bad that John Winters isn't around these days, cause I'm sure he'd have some interesting comments on this. I've spoken to him a couple of times about paddle design (last time exactly a year ago this coming weekend) and he's pointed out that this notion that the blades "hardly slip" is a misconception. It's interesting that avid paddlers feel that the paddle blades don't slip. I've watched many canoe and kayak paddle strokes trying to understand exactly what's going on. They slip a lot! Paddle with part of the blade above water and watch how far the vortex travels from the blade while it's in the water (don't confuse it with the persistence of the vortex after the stroke is over). That's paddle motion. The problem is that you have a hard time separating the relative motions of the paddle compared to the kayak, you compared to the water and the paddle compared to the water. All other things being equal, I'd not discount the significance of blade size. Mike *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Thu May 10 2001 - 17:49:22 PDT
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