Chuck Holst said on 21 July 2009 14:08 > from experience that when a paddle loom is covered by > a sheath of ice, shoulders make it much easier to get > a secure grip on the paddle Haven't yet had the opportunity to paddle in icy conditions - but this sounds reasonable. I spent the first 30 years of my life near Montreal - so I do appreciate ice ;-) > haven't seen a documented native Greenland paddle > that is over 3 inches My only easily-available reference here is Harvey Golden's Kayaks of Greenland. He reviews 78 Northern paddles, some 72 of which appear to be designated 'Greenland' as opposed to 'Polar Greenland'. Of the 72, a full 31 are more than 3" wide. Of the 72, one fifth are 3.5" wide or more. Note that HG has used the width of the paddle blade and not the width of the (often greater) bone tips. > Regarding extra-long paddles of around 96 - 106 inches... > though they are Inuit paddles, they are not Greenland paddles. Again from the 72 KoG paddles, the long ones are 98", 94", 92" (2 of), 91" (2 of) and on down. (Just for easy reference, these are KoG plates 31, 52, 65, 7, 55 & 33). The longest is classified as mid-west-coast Greenland - circa 1926. The next longest was made in 1959 for John Heath - and I don't know how large John was. Given the stature of the Inuit I met in the 1960's and references (in film & print) to earlier generations of Inuit, I believe that few of them topped 6'. Without getting into the arm-span versus height argument, I conjecture that the range of their body sizes (and hence their paddle sizes) was historically somewhat smaller than ours is now. So I would argue that you might want to 'up' the lower limit of your 'extra-long' paddle range a little - especially if we try and build Greenland-style paddles to suit our larger body sizes. I accept completely the 'what works for you' approach. My interest is in finding out what that means - and exploring the 'whys'. I have learned the sliding stroke and, for a while, carried a very short storm paddle (instead of my old euro-split). Made myself paddle home with it a few times too, just to see what it felt like. Frankly, in normal wind speeds, I found it a bit of a pain. OK for an emergency; but I think I'd sit on a beach somewhere and carve a new GP with my pocketknife, before I'd complete a multi-day trip with a storm paddle and sliding stroke. That being said, I do enjoy watching someone else do it ;-) Best Regards Paul Hayward, Auckland, New Zealand *************************************************************************** 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 Jul 21 2009 - 06:25:34 PDT
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0 : Thu Aug 21 2025 - 16:31:37 PDT