Re: [Paddlewise] Feathered or not?

 All of the strokes and braces are the most powerful when you are pulling one
arm back as though your forearm is a rope tied to the paddle by your fingers
and your pushing hand pushes directly in line with your forearm and wrist. The
paddle shaft, your wrist and your elbow should all be in a straight line with
your elbow leading (when pulling) or pushing directly behind your hand much
like making a straight punch. Any bend or angle at the wrist (more commonly
seen with the pushing arm) will weaken a strokes power and effectiveness.
Think of it as giving your strokes and braces an added punch. Worse, bending
your wrist either back or side to side can lead to repetitive stress injuries.
To minimize the stress on your wrists do not bend the wrist back to "control"
a feathered paddle (as is almost universally taught) and also hold the paddle
with as loose a grip as you can. With any feather angle your wrists should
also not bend side to side to follow the changing shaft angle throughout the
stroke. In other words, the shaft should pivot in your hand and not bend your
wrist as it pivots. This is important whether you paddle feathered or
unfeathered. With any feather angle control the blade with the hand nearest
the water and relax the upper hand so the paddle can freely rotate in the hand
that is pushing. This way you dont bend your wrist when paddling feathered
and you do not have to lift your elbow out like a boxers hook if you paddle
unfeathered (to take out the 45 degree rotation you put on the blade by
lifting the upper hand from your elbow). With any feather it is more efficient
to push with your elbow starting at your side and the key to doing this is LOW
HAND control. Tip: if you hold the paddle loosely between strokes the rotating
moment you put on it while lifting can be used to spin it a little further
into position without needing to bend your wrist at all. A good paddle will
also make this adjustment to the angle if necessary as the blade enters the
water. If you have to physically immobilize your wrists with braces or tape
until you learn to paddle without bending them, do it. They will thank you for
it later.



The above was cut and pasted from our Paddling manual (about 1/3 of the way
into it). The tip in italics is for feathered paddlers.



Mike, my advice is to stick with feathered and learn to paddle without bending
your wrists. It took a few hours for me to convert to that after having bent
my wrist (as I was taught) for years in whitewater paddling. As soon as I took
up long days in a sea kayak my left wrist (I paddle left feather) started
killing me. I needed to do something quick or abort a two week trip. With so
many years of WW bracing honed into me unfeathered was not a good option. I
developed the hold the paddle lightly and dont' push or pull with bent wrist
style insead and it became second nature in a day. I never had wrist problems
from paddling again and I once paddled over 70 miles in a 23 hour period.
Sticking with feathered, you won't confuse your bracing reactions. Going into
strong headwinds will be much easier. The side wind argument is bogus. Once
you know that your paddle can be lifted by extreme wind you are careful not to
expose the blade to the wind and use a lower stroke in those condition. If
your paddle is caught by the wind simply twist it to spill the wind. If the
wind catch is strong enough it risks capsizing you, simply let go of the upper
hand and let the upper blade blow over into the water while hanging on to it
with the downwind hand. Next quickly bring the paddle  back accross your boat
straight into the wind. Your paddle will now be upside down (if it is
asymetrical) but you can still paddle and brace with it just fine and can
strighten it back out when you get the break to do so. The time you might
forget that you need to keep your paddle low for the strong side wind is if
something happens and you suddenly need to do a brace. During a high brace the
feathered paddle's upper blade now slices through the wind but the unfeathered
paddle's upper blade is suddenly flat to the wind and too high to avoid being
caught by it. Oops!



Tha argument (not mentioned here yet), that you get the upwind loss back when
you paddle downwind with an unfeathered paddle also has no merit. Since the
upper paddle blade is moving forward at about 2.5 times as fast as the kayak
is moving (depending some on the paddle's length). A kayak doing 4 knots into
a ten knot wind has a 20 knot relative wind on the paddle blade, Doubling the
wind speed and creating four times the drag. Turn around and paddle downwind
and you get the wind and the paddle going the same speed in the same direction
for zero net gain. Feather your paddle and don't bend your wrist by using low
hand control (rather than right or left hand control).
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