Jennifer wrote: Of course, there's lots of reasons why we don't all use a wing paddle or hatchet blade all the time that don't have to do with efficiency of forward acceleration. But when I most desperately need to catch someone or some thing, I visualize each blade as immovable in the water for the duration of each stroke. If I've missed the point please let me know - there's still a few 'things' I can't catch! ------------------------------------------- The way I understand it and my personal point of view is that the shape of wing paddles are very effective in not dragging backwards. They donīt displace water sideways as much as other paddles and therefore water holds them tight in place and more power goes to move the boat forward. We have manufactured several types of paddles for our own use only. The first ones were kind of rounded on the back side, and you felt little effort to paddle. We use them for children now. But you also gain little speed. The paddle really displaces backwards and that is a loss of energy. When we want to accelerate fast we just see our paddles passing by us very quickly and little speed gained. We then made some flat section paddles with the same cross section as the previous ones. Now you could feel the force on your arms and torso if you want to give the same speed to your stroke. The blades offer more resistance to travel through the water and therefore give you better grip. It can be easily seen with braces. If you make a high brace with a rounded paddle you have to hip flick faster because you sink quicker. With the flat blade you can hold longer before a hip flick because the paddle does not sink so easily. Now if you place it sideways on the edge it will sink immediately. Our next paddle was flat with a little edge turned into the power side. That little edge was enough to retain more water and it was still harder to paddle because it had better grip still. It held water better, and we could accelerate faster. It had other inconveniences when bracing, sculling and other things. So we ended up with a design that is pretty flat, non symmetrical to avoid fluttering, with a little edge and pretty strong so that we can rest on it to get in and out of the kayak. So our conclusion is that the more means you use to stop water from sliding to the sides, the better grip you have, some ways to do it are larger area, wing shape, computerized shape, spoon shape, edges, etc. That does not mean that it will make one specific paddler more efficient since as many have said in this forum, many other aspects must be brought into consideration, including things like type of blade for type of boat. Best Regards, Rafael Mier-Maza el cayuco chief. *************************************************************************** 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 Fri Jul 26 2002 - 10:13:29 PDT
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