Your description is not complete enough to tell if lift is being produced in a useful direction. Does your blade move away from the boat as you stroke, or is it towards the boat? or parallel to the boat? Is your "leading" edge towards the front of the boat, or just the edge that is cutting through the water first, or is it both? One vortex indicates lift maybe produced, but it doesn't say which direction it is producing it. I've used a Greenland paddle and I can make it produce lift in a useful direction, but to do so, I must use a stroke that is different than the standard "Greenland" style stroke. Nick On Sep 7, 2004, at 3:25 PM, Robert MacDonald wrote: > Nick wrote: > > "I frequently here people talk about paddles working like wings and am > prepared to accept that it is possible. Yet whenever I ask people to > describe how the paddle is working like a wing, their explanations fall > flat." > > I use my GP with a very vertical stroke. The angle of attack the > blade is relatively low, like 45 degrees to the motion. A "euro" > paddle is used at 90 degrees. I am quite certain that lift is > involved, as I can see the water flowing over the paddle, just the way > a fluid flows over a foil from leading edge to trailing edge. The > leading edge is towards the boat, and the trailing edge is the outside > edge. Only one vortex is formed, not two, by this stroke. snip > I hope this explanation is clear enough? In any case, I would > recommend you just build a Greenland stick and go try it. Using a > vertical stroke, so you can watch the flow and see what happens at > various angles of attack and so on, is worth a thousand e-mails trying > to describe what is going on. > Nick Schade Guillemot Kayaks 824 Thompson St Glastonbury, CT 06033 USA Ph/Fx: (860) 659-8847 http://www.guillemot-kayaks.com/ *************************************************************************** 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 Tue Sep 07 2004 - 12:51:02 PDT
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