Re: [Paddlewise] Some basic questions for a (re)-beginner

Thinking about it I may well have got the units wrong, the GPS readout was 
in kph and read above 5 kph most of the time. But speed over land is not 
always the same as speed over the water of course. Anyway - we hadn't 
planned to do a three day trip in almost one day - it just happened that 
way! For the second half of our paddling day it was very calm and glassy 
smooth water and the boats were travelling well, 6-7 kph at times.

The boats themselves were from Valley, I was in a Pintail and my companion 
was paddling a Nordkap HM with the fixed skeg. He'd only just aquired this 
boat and we were interested to see if he'd be a lot faster than myself in 
the Pintail! The Pintail has more rocker and its quite manouverable for a 
sea kayak with the skeg retracted and yet tracks well with the skeg down. 
It also handles rough water very competently.... which is important to me! 
While not the biggest boat in the fleet -  I can normaly carry enough kit 
for a 2 week trip in the hatches, but that is about its limit. 

My mate had  previously been paddling an NDK Romany which we'd found to be 
a little slower than my Pintail. As it turned out the difference in speed 
of the boats wasn't an issue - I was able to keep pace with the Nordkap 
without any problem. This may have had something to do with relative 
fitness of us both on the day and the fact that I had a variable skeg 
system and could trim the boat to the prevailing conditions easily - which 
could not be done in the fixed skeg Nordkap.

If you are interested - I can remember our start and finish times so I 
could always work out our average speed by referring to the chart.  

We are actually planning a long sea crossing of about 16 hours, and we were 
interested to find how we felt - and after 12 hours of paddling. As it 
turned out we were quite fresh and felt we could have handled another 4 
hours without undue stress... I guess an efficient forward paddling style 
is quite useful!

Keith

...... Original Message .......
On Fri, 8 Aug 2003 20:35:30 -0700 owner-paddlewise_at_paddlewise.net 
(PaddleWise) wrote:
>Subject: Re: [Paddlewise] Some basic questions for a (re)-beginner
>
>Keith said (snip):
>>A friend and myself almost circumnavigated Rona and Raasay (

>12 hours at 5 knots? That's pretty good. What kind of kayaks were you
>paddling?

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