Nick Schade wrote: >How does the fact that your hand is touching the blade increase your >control? What is it about the GP that makes gripping its blade more >effective at control than gripping the base of a phenomina blade? How does >shaft "exposure" decrease control? I could understand if euro paddles >had a tendency to rotate in your hands, but they don't. Good euro >paddles have egg shaped shaft sections, but even round shafts don't >have a tendency to spin in your hands. How does fact that there is a >section of shaft "exposed" between your hand and the blade effect >paddle control? In my experience the rotation of the paddle is exactly what distinguishes a Greenland Paddle from the euro paddle. Sure you can change the blade angle with a euro paddle, happens all the time for example with strokes like bow rudder or hanging draw, and I agree you can attempt to do everthing with a euro which you do with a greenland paddle, but in my experience you don't. Maybe it is just a leverage thing - you wouldn't for example see an open canoe paddle without some form of T or grip, but I think there is more to it. I'm not so sure this isn't a troll, but nevertheless I'll try and explain my thinking further ... but first have a look at Jim Snyder's (of squirt boat fame) pages: http://www.jimisnyder.com/html/designer.html He has a site with info on specialist 'euro' paddles he builds for paddling under water! Here he describes paddles as either 'bland' or having 'flavour', depending to what degree they flutter or shed vortices as they are stroked. Novices and die hard 'euro' users dislike the flutter phenomenon, and so paddle designers build paddles to minimise it. Such paddles are in Jim Snyder's terminology 'bland'. You can make a bland paddle even more so by putting it's shaft ahead of the blade as on a lendal style modified crank shaft. Don't get me wrong bland isn't bad, it just isn't what greenland paddles are about, and Greenland paddles are just like euro paddles in that some are more bland than others - no one seems to point out that two greenland 'style' paddles can actually feel very different. The key to a good one is the 'flavour' Jim Snyder describes ... the best feel lively, and provide lots of feedback to the blade's angle of attack. So what use is this? What does the erstwhile euro paddler say to his un-enlightened paddling companions who are curious about greenland paddles but as yet bewildered why anyone would use one? There are euro paddlers, and maybe Nick is amongst them, who realize greenland paddlers really like their stick things, and they see that they do perform out on the water, but they don't yet understand why ... and when they try them their muscle memory contradicts these observations and just screams these paddles are quirky, feel odd, don't brace, and don't accelerate fast. You do need to do something different with them. I suspect that many greenland paddle users have been there but really it is very hard to remember what it was like not knowing how to wield one once you can, and even harder to actually put your finger on what you do differently. What you don't need to do is paddle lower or higher, or with a crunch, or with sliding strokes, indeed all of this you can do with anything even a broomstick. The post above provides a clue, and that is the rotation which Nick points out that euro paddles don't do when you pull on them. The rotation is the key to the greenland paddle. Mess with the angle of attack. Try for example stroking with the blade absolutely flat (zero angle of attack), and then allow it slowly come through to the 90 degrees more familiar to pullers of bland paddle. Do this over the course of several strokes. The paddle will try to move about, don't fight it, but try to feel what its doing. Pull hard, pull easy at different angles. Allow the angle to come back again to flat. At some point for each part of the stroke for each paddle there will be an angle of attack which is the sweet spot. The trick isn't just finding the sweet spot its learning to recognize it and hard wiring it so the blade control becomes unconscious and dynamic - the angle isn't constant throughout the stroke. It unfortunately takes time to get this. Took me three years. The good news is that I'm maybe a bit slow, and while your learning this the greenland paddle will at least be as good as your flat blade, and its fun, and any klutz can roll with it! ;-) ------------ Colin Calder In Scotland Ironically somewhere in Europe :-) *************************************************************************** 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. 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