>You can not have a paddle without "slippage", or you would get no forward >motion!! [... and similar statements) Why is that so I wonder? If the water would say freeze for the moment the blade was in it, the paddle would still work, but you won't need the blade (area) anymore? The reason I think we need blades on our paddles is because the paddle does (unfortunately?) move through the water, and what we need is 'resistance' against this movement to go forward? Main question for me is, how big and what form a blade you need to paddle well. For freestyling a bit I prefer a rather large blade, because this involves a lot of accelerating and stationary strokes and my stroke rate is generaly relatively low then. For touring, I prefer blades as small as possible letting me paddle me as easy as possible on my usual cruising speed, where I take in a large account of upwind paddling as the most important factor, since this is indeed the most tiring condition to paddle. I seem to prefer low aspect ratio blades, because I have the _feeling_ that they deliver just a bit more performance at an easier for me to maintain high stroke rate. But there are so much variables around, I will still keep an open mind for any method to improve on what I do. (That's were PaddleWise is doing very well I think?!!) And I have discovered that even seemingly little different boat designs ask (me) for quite different stroke rates to paddle well. So I have to do more field tests with differenty paddles, which is good anyway because I can do some more paddling then... Dirk Barends *************************************************************************** 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 Mon May 28 2001 - 06:35:36 PDT
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