Date: Fri, 17 Mar 1995 22:02:23 EST
From: MRPK81A@prodigy.com (MR TOM L CLARKE)
Message-Id: <013.04584222.MRPK81A@prodigy.com>
To: baidarka@imagelan.com
Subject: Paddling...
I'm confused... how can slippage in the water of the paddle
not be a problem...
If I paddle against the air, I would not move forward very
quickly...If I paddled against the bottom (ignore the 'drag
in shallow water' issue) virtually all of my energy would be
used in moving the kayak forward... any slippage of the
paddle is non-productive...
Using the biking analogy, it would be as if the cranks were
made of rubber...a portion of the pedaling energy is being
used to bend the cranks, vs. propel the bike...
If the paddle slips, energy is being used to create turbu-
lence, rather than forward motion...
Reduce turbulence, increase forward motion...
What I get out of all of this is that I use bigger bladed
paddles to reduce the slippage... the problem is that I'm
not strong enough to push the boat...so I use a smaller
bladed paddle, with more slippage (less pushing the boat)...
kind of like using a 100 inch gear, up hill, vs a 50 inch
gear...
New thought... is the stroke of the Greenland style paddle
in any way like the yalu used on sampans... certainly the
yalu uses'lift' to propel the boat, vs. pure drag...
One more thought, an extraordinarily strong lashing is
obtained by using Turk's head... these were used to lash
split spars together as a temporary fix... they can be
brought up so tight that they will bury themselves in the
wood...they'd certainly hold the blade on a shaft.. and look
kind of nice too... and act as a drip ring...
Another thought or two on paddles... why not put an edge...
let's say 1 cm high, perpendicular to the flat of the blade,
in order to prevent slippage...
Also, why not cant the blade to the shaft by 10 or 15
degrees, as is done in racing single paddles, so that the
strongest part of the stroke, next to our hip, is vectored
aft, as opposed to vectored 10 to 15 degrees upwards...
Both of these ideas may create some 'minor' problems with
braces...:-)
I was thinking of building a double paddle using these two
concepts, blade (and 'ridges' from aluminum), shaft of wood,
attached to the 'center' of the back of the blade such that
the paddle could spin about it's long axis...
Just thinking outloud...TLC