One of the goals of leaning a boat is essentially to give it more rocker. Even a kayak with a very straight keel will appear to the water to have a lot of rocker when leaned to one side. The degree of lean or edging required to get this effect will depend on the boat, and leaning by itself may not be enough to make some boats turn, you will still need to apply a steering force with a sweep. As you turn, your center of gravity wants to stay going straight. This can actually accelerate the rate the boat turns. As you initiate your turn the bow will be exposed to water pressure on the side that is on the outside of the turn, actually so will stern. But if you lean forward slightly it will drive the bow down, causing the pressure on the bow to increase while decreasing the pressure on the stern. This by itself might be enough to get the boat turning. You will also may get a small amount bow-down pressure just do to deceleration (like applying brakes in a car, where the car leans squats in front slightly). To continue the turn, the stern needs to slide sideways through the water faster than the bow. Leaning towards the outside of the turn will turn any "skeginess" at the stern away from the sideways moving water making it easier to get by. But if the general flow of the water is still along the length of the boat, it will want to stay going that way. You somehow need to break the stern free of the flowing water and get it moving some other direction. The best way to do this is pulling in strongly towards the back of the boat at the end of your sweep stroke. Once the water is flowing side ways across the stern and the stern is swinging outwards more freely it will tend to keep doing that, until you change something. To stop the turning you generally only need to return the kayak to an even keel, although some boats will continue turning until you stop it with a slight sweep on the other side. Nick -- Nick Schade Guillemot Kayaks 824 Thompson St Glastonbury, CT 06033 (860) 659-8847 *************************************************************************** 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 Wed Jan 09 2002 - 08:09:53 PST
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