Re: [Paddlewise] Efficacy of Sponsons on Canoes and Kayaks

I just read the whole report. What I want to know is how many of my tax
dollars went into this rehash and mishmash of  opinions compiled by someone
who obviously didn't know very much about paddling themselves?  Maybe
assigning the task to someone naive about the subject was supposed to make
it more objective. Why couldn't they have gotten together a small group of
paddlers ranging from experts to novices and do a few experiments to see
what the problems were for each sub-group and how well different proposed
solutions actually worked for that sub-group of paddlers (in a variety of
the conditions where paddler deaths have been known to occur). Then from
personal experience and measurement they could list what the upsides and
downsides were to the various proposed solutions. One benefit of experiments
would be that the results would have been more up-to-date than the opinions
of those who experimented with them 12 to 15 years ago. I'm no friend of
Tim's (being included among those he names as having the blood of a thousand
paddlers on his hands) but he did eventually take my advice and recently
updated his sponsons to get rid of some of their major downsides. Some of
the criticism of sponsons (difficulty of deploying the tangled mess for one)
was no longer applicable to the latest version. It's too bad that Tim has
already poisoned the word "Sponsons" so much that they are practically
universally shunned and no one (except the government) pays attention to the
whole category any more.

Rather than accept and publish someone's estimate of around 20% more drag
due to sponsons, why not have someone paddle a kayak with sponsons deployed
(as they work best for stability) and compare their time over a short course
with the same paddler without sponsons deployed? Doubling the drag only
loses about one knot in speed. From my experience with them I'd be willing
to bet sponsons do far more than just double the drag. Roger may have meant
they cut his speed by 20% rather than that they added that much drag. Even
looked at it that way I'd bet the reduction in top speed is far more than
20%.

I especially liked that one of the "commonly used materials" for making
kayaks and canoes was "proprietary lay-up". Gee, I haven't heard of that
yet, it must be one of them new-fangled materials. Probably something very
similar to that older material known as "I'd rather not say".

I can't say I disagreed with the conclusions, but I'd sure like to know who
got paid how much for this government boondoggle. Did this whole report (and
the waste of my tax dollars to produce it) result because an unnamed
Canadian, with an agenda, willed it to happen?

Matt Broze
www.marinerkayaks.com
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