Re: [Paddlewise] bracing and power

 Craig Jungers wrote

>>>>But it would be very interesting if very long paddles turn out to be the
fad of
the future in the same way GPs and SOF boats have over the past few years.

Maybe if a few short-paddle users try Chuck's technique and report back we
could get some better perspective. Until then I'm keeping an open mind.<<<<<<

Maybe you should give it a try and report back to us Craig. I've been there,
done that, and I'm not going back again. The first sea kayak paddles I used
were 8 feet long as were almost all sea kayak paddles back in the 1970's. Now,
I already had experience with WW paddles (which were then nearly 7' long but
have also trended shorter since--as the WW kayaks have trended shorter and as
a result sit deeper in the water now). By going shorter myself, and then
promoting and offering shorter paddles for sea kayaking I was certainly not in
the mainstream back in the early 1980's. After buying one of his WW paddles in
a little longer length for a spare, I talked Bob Collmer, who had been making
the strongest and lightest WW paddles, into making a few modifications to make
them into sea kayak paddles for us. Collmer Paddles later became Lightning
Paddles when Bob (a retired crafts teacher) sold to Hank Hayes and retired
again when his increasing little side business was making him much busier than
he wanted to be. BTW does anyone know where Hank is. He seemed to suddenly
drop out of paddle making and I haven't been able to contact him since.

The trend has been to shorter paddles (now even a little shorter than I
advocated) and I think there are good reasons for that trend. Most who are
paddling reasonably narrow (25" and under) kayaks will not be going back to
longer paddles no how much they are promoted by an industry that might want to
make your existing equipment seem obsolete so you will have to buy more new
stuff from them. I'm thinking of how the bicycling industry operates. My first
Mt. Bike had oval chain rings (but I quickly changed out the smallest to
round) and now I never see oval rings on bikes at all. The shifter mechanisms
keep coming and going too. Ski pole fads used to go longer and shorter at
different times so that (for me at 6' tall) sometimes 60" was deemed right and
at other times as short as 48" (but I've stayed in the 50 to--at most--54"
range that works best for me). My skis were 7' 2" (218.5cm) when I was a
teenager not yet full grown and they have trended shorter ever since. I have a
lot of skis (most that I paid less than $10 for--they don't appreciate against
the dollar like a good sea kayak does, in fact there is not many durable goods
that depreciate as fast as skis). I mostly used 150cm skis last year (even
though I haven't slowed down much as yet).

Evolution is such that many things get left over from a time when they may
have once been necessary. When sea kayaks were wide Kleppers, and the like,
the Euro paddles needed to be longer (blade shoulder to blade shoulder) to
clear the sides of the kayak and take a reasonable stroke. With narrower
single kayaks that need disappeared but it took some time for the paddle trend
to catch up and evolve into what worked better for the kayaks being used
(except for maybe Chuck--do you know of any others, who you didn't instruct or
personally influence, that use 8.5 or 9 foot paddles in narrow kayaks?).

I took a lot of abuse from the British wing of sea kayaking (and their
promoters) back in the 1980's for having longer cockpits than the 19 or 20"
cockpit deemed essential for a "real" ocean kayak by them back then too. Maybe
there is still a hard core tiny cockpit contingent but most Brit boats today
have cockpits that are almost big enough (if you are my size) to get out of on
a dock without having to crawl out on your elbows. I'm sure Doug and Chuck
remember those days as they were both paddling and writing about it back
then.

I got a lot of flak for hard chines that "would catch and flip you over in the
surf" too (originated from folks who had either never tried a hard chine kayak
in surf (or probably any kayak in surf) or wanted to sell their rounded chine
kayaks and imagined some disadvantage to hard-chines they could throw out as a
red-herring. I even remember Mike Neckar saying "Ve don't belief in hard
chines" back in the mid 1980's. A little later, multiple hard chines were on
most new Necky kayaks (but I suspect they wee as much to stiffen a
lighterweight plastic kayak as for any other design considerations). Mike used
to promote fish-form hulls as being faster too but I was surprised to see that
Necky Kayaks is now touting their new Looksha Elite as being Swede-form (and
for a lot of the right reasons) in the June 2010 Sea Kayaker issue. I'm
guessing Mike is no longer involved in Necky these days. BTW, did anyone else
happen to notice that the Looksha Elite is not actually Swede-form (according
to SK's numbers) but is instead quite fish-form? SK checked their numbers and
claim they didn't error (and last I heard, no one had written them asking
about the discrepancy either).
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