Subject: RE: [baidarka] Greenland Paddle
From: Chuck Holst (cholst@bitstream.net)
Date: Mon Jan 28 2002 - 10:21:29 EST
Greg's method and mine appear to produce pretty much equal results. I
always found the term "body width" confusing, since one's body is not
uniform in width. Like Greg, the result was looms that were too short for
me. Fortunately, being aware of the partial sliding stroke through the film
"Palos Brudefaerd," I was able to compensate, but not everyone knew about
the partial sliding stroke in those days.
Chuck Holst
-----Original Message-----
From: Greg Stamer [SMTP:gstamer@hotmail.com]
Sent: Friday, January 25, 2002 10:06 PM
To: baidarka@paddlewise.net
Subject: RE: [baidarka] Greenland Paddle
SNIP I used to size Greenland
>paddles by letting my arms dangle, but when my arms dangle freely, I find
>that they don't hang straight -- my elbows stick out.
SNIP
Chuck,
This is a good point, and I left out some details for the sake of brevity.
I
let my arms hang freely (not tucked to my side), and then bend at the
elbows
to bring my forearms horizontal to the ground, and parallel to each other.
If you make a circle with your thumbs and forefingers, this marks where the
paddle shoulders should be.
Of course, this is still just a ballpark figure, and assumes that your
kayak
has a low foredeck and a beam not much wider than your hips. Most folks
with
wider, higher volume kayaks will probably need to increase the loom to at
least match the beam of their kayak, and perhaps more. If in doubt, just
leave the loom a little short, and widen it, if necessary, after using it
for awhile.
The common advice ten years ago was to make the loom "body width", not
"shoulder width", and this practice resulted in looms that were much too
short for me. When I discussed this with Maligiaq Padilla, he exclaimed
that
this method was for producing a paddle to be used with a partial sliding
stroke.
Greg Stamer
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