[Paddlewise] Speed vs. efficiency

I always get a little nervous when the talk of "speed" comes up regarding 
kayaks.  Quite honestly I think hull speed is nowhere as important as 
efficiency.  I want to know how much effort is it going to take me to 
maintain a constant speed, whether it's the maximum or not.  I truly 
believe that most sea kayaks today are going to have close enough maximum 
hull speeds, that MOST people will not notice a difference.  Obviously I'm 
not talking about comparing a Greenlander Pro with a Wilderness Systems 
Pungo.  Whenever people ask me about speeds I always counter with, they'll 
both go plenty fast, but which one would you rather keep at this speed for 
a long period of time?  It all comes down to effiiciency as far as I'm 
concerned.

Happy paddling.

Mark Mastalski

At 09:12 AM 5/14/01 , Stephen King wrote:
>Obviously a REALLY long boat
> > like that would weigh a lot and thus have a lot of inertia to overcome 
> getting
> > it moving, but once up to speed -- would it be faster than the 17 
> footer?  Or
> > perhaps another way to ask it:  would it require less paddle effort to 
> maintain
> > a given speed than a 17 footer??  What if it were so loaded with weight 
> that it
> > floated the same height in the water as the shorter kayak -- would it 
> still be
> > faster?

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