Craig Jungers wrote: > I think that there are other factors that could have resulted in such > a large difference. Prevailing winds, for one thing. Michael responded: >>>>>>How? If the winds affect the ruddered kayak, they affect an unruddered kayak. If the ruddered performs poorly in those winds unless the rudder is used and the unruddered is not so seriously affected, then the problem is the ruddered kayak and the solution is not the rudder.<<<<<<<<< I think Craig meant that because the non-rudder kayaking was done early in the trip condition then could have been such that Paul spend a lot of time bucking headwinds but didn't do so as much later in the trip when he was using the rudder. Also Paul started the trip in the colder South and moved North up the East Coast into much warmer waters. For every 10 degrees F the water temperature goes up the friction goes down about 2.5%. I don't know what the actual differences are here but I imagine there could be a better than 30 degree difference from when he started without the rudder to when he was measuring his mileage with one. Paul would have needed to trade off at least every few days if not every few hours to make a fair comparison. Unless he wrote down all the factors each day (including water temperature and wind speed and direction/relative to his direction) he would have no way to make a good comparison. Further, his conditioning and efficiency of stroking may well have improved over time during the trip (which I suspect it did even if he started out as a highly skilled paddler--as he certainly did). Matt Broze www.marinerkayaks.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 Mon Jul 02 2007 - 11:04:37 PDT
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