Nick wrote; > I'm not even certain that we can get to the point where we can worry > about angle of attack to achieve lift. Any kind of lift is going to > require the paddle blade move perpendicularly to the direction of boat > motion. SNIP I raised the point because it seems that the angle of attack may be harder to maintain than many people imagine. In other words do we actually paddle in conditions that can reliably produce lift? If my understanding of the stroke makes sense the paddle travels in an arc. The blade hits the water well away from the hull and slices down towards the hull. If the paddl blade travels in an arc I can see that it might travel normal to the boat's course. I could have this wrong so maybe some one who is an expert at this kind of thing can correct me. Cheers John Winters *************************************************************************** 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/ ***************************************************************************
On Sep 9, 2004, at 7:49 PM, John Winters wrote: > If my understanding of the stroke makes sense the paddle travels in an > arc. The blade hits the water well away from the hull and slices down > towards the hull. If the paddl blade travels in an arc I can see that > it might travel normal to the boat's course. I could have this wrong > so maybe some one who is an expert at this kind of thing can correct > me. Try as I might, asking people who have studied the Greenland style stroke in-depth, I have not seen a description which indicates much "normal" blade travel. There does seem to be some travel in towards the boat, but in this case the leading edge of the paddle is towards the back. The travel in towards the boat seems to be a result of the canting of the blade causing lift towards the boat. Lift may be present, but not so that it produces forward thrust. However, the descriptions I have seen do make a point of saying that the last half of the stroke is where most of the power is produced. This suggests to me that if the same "cant" angle is held that the direction of flow over the paddle may reverse and there may be some forward-thrusting-lift as the paddle moves away from the boat again. I have not been able to confirm this. Harvey Golden will be at Mystic Seaport tomorrow, maybe I'll get a chance to learn some more. 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/ ***************************************************************************
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