JohnHuth

knot-pounds?? First time I've seen those units. What's the speed of light in furlongs per fortnight? What is "today drag'? OK, so waves, yup, that'll change things.

I'll take a guess - in the 1 kt current. Secondary effect is arms getting tired on the return part of the upper blade pushing against the wind.

These are all good comments. I think Phil has a good one: break it up into small pieces. A couple of other pieces of advice I've heard from others: 1.) A lot of times unfamiliarity of location causes problems. Remind the paddler that they're paddled in identical conditions, but not in the this location (if true). Get them to just look at it as another day in their familiar spot. 2.) For the rigid paddler - one guy I knew called this "lilly paddling" - remind them that the best thing to do is relax and keep their form, that nature "responds to" a little aggression - sort of like a dog senses fear. Once I was paddling with a friend. He went through a shoaly area, no problem. I went over the same shoal, and a big breaker hit me. I managed to stay upright, but the unexpected nature of the breaker unnerved me. We stopped, had a granola bar and talked about other stuff, and then I was good to go.

Freya Hoffmeister, yup, she completed it - 16,000 miles: http://www.canoekayak.com/touring-kayaks/freya-hoffmeister-completes-south-america-circumnavigation/

Quoth Gene "This kind of attitude appears to be rife in some universities and colleges today where students are provided "safe places" to retreat to if debate or discussion seems to hurt their feelings." Without writing about the incident - I read the article and the posts, but, yeah, this happens.....I just liked quote about universities. Too true, and only postpones the entry into the real world.

For me, it's just the habits. With my usual habits, I tend to not lose things and move rapidly. Providing it's not raining buckets, it's something like: Stuff bag, roll up pad, put on any non-water layers inside tent, jetison stuff outside tent, put on footware, take down tent. Than put non-breakfast gear in boundary bags, bring them down near the launch point, come back up, make breakfast, clean that up, dawdle over coffee and yak about the day's plans, while looking at a map, get into my wet gear, bring that to the edge of the launch point, put the boat in shallow water, pack it up, and launch. Just my habit. In case of pouring rain: yell at my mates, see if they concur on sleeping in, read a book and wait for a break in the weather before packing.

A good solution is to get a 35 to 40 degree synth bag and also get a liner. You can use the bag as a 'quilt' on a warm evening, as a bag in mid-temps, and then put in the liner for cold temps - a cost effective way to get three seasons out of it. I used this system section hiking the AT with my son and it worked well with big temperature swings in the mountains.

Yeah, you got me.....I spent the entire past week cranking on physics research-y things. I haven't given "gustiness" a lot of thought as I write this, but I'll give you my take. Gusts come from a lot of factors. I absolutely love "von Karman vortex streets" - look this up and you'll see some great images. This is mainly wind forming mini tornadoes - first right handed, and then left-handed, when it flows around an obstacle. Take a look at the pattern of winds you get in dry leaves as they're carried in the wind - often times you'll see these mini-tornadoes in the pattern of the leaves blowing. Another great observation is to look at how branches of trees or long grass moves in the presence of wind. If wind were uniform, you'd just have a constant displacement of a branch, but they move back and forth under the influence of the wind and their own resistance to motion. Another factor is the change in speed from the surface into the higher reaches of the sky - there's more friction at the surface, which slows air down, but the flow is not all horizontal - you can get vertical flow that taps into higher speeds as you go higher - you get up drafts and down drafts which are not uniform and create gusts. Another factor still is associated with convection - hot air rising and cold air sinking - this isn't uniform. One example is the up and down drafts associated with thunderstorms - and can be quite local (and dangerous). Typically the higher the average wind speed, the larger the 'gustiness' you'll get because there's a bigger difference between the surface flow and the upper level flow. Yesterday (Saturday, April 11th) there was a lot of "swirliness" going on that I noticed, Typically you'll get more gusts when the conditions for thunderstorms are ripe. Sorry it's such a complicated answer, but air (a fluid) is like that - complicated. In the words of Lewis Fry Richardson (a physicist and meteorologist who studied such things): Big whirls have little whirls that feed on their velocity, and little whirls have lesser whirls and so on to viscosity

I'd love to hear if there's an answer for this. The best I've managed is a Pendleton wool shirt that I just button all the way to the top button - the thickness of the fabric seems to cut down on the buggers who sneak inside. After one trip through Quebec, however, the inside of my bug hat had had tons of little red splotches where I'd pinched to death some black flies that had already gorged on me. Clearly not a foolproof solution.

Since I do a lot of backpacking, I watch the weight of gear, and have been wary of the jet boil because of weight, but I've met many backpackers who love it. It might, in the long run, save weight on fuel, I'm not sure. It might be interesting to try to look at the tradeoffs. Tangential story - some time ago when I wasn't so well connected, I hired a guide to paddle with out of Jonesport - four day trip. Certainly a great guy, but I can't resist relating this. We were camped on Bois Bubert. I had out my pocket rocket isopro, and he was trying to impress me with his jetboil with how fast it worked. Unfortunately, he knocked it over, spilling boiling water on his bare foot. He shouted...."what do I do? what do I do?" I suggested that he go down to the waterline, and soak his foot for 10 minutes in the 50 degree water, which he did. Made me wonder why I hired a guide, but honestly, it *was* worth it.

Can't figure out how to edit my post - I watched the video again - Leon clearly states that it starts out as a stern rudder position, and then it move toward the bow - it looks like the blade ends up next to the body, and then it looks like he draws it back again like the end of a roll that accompanies the hip-snap. That's kinda-sorta-maybe...how I see it happening. It's going to take some time to figure this creature out.

OK....so I'm starting to see how that thing works. Something like this: (?) As you start to cross the eddy line, the flow from oncoming current will start to torque the bow downstream, the blade is then acting like a brake/backstroke on the side of the oncoming current and also helps get the turn started - the lean reduces the wetted hull area and lets the turn you've initiated keep going, and the lean-back keeps you from tipping over more - at this point, the blade acts more like a support, and sets up the hip snap to regain position. That's very dynamic and looks like it depends a lot on timing. I'd get wet for sure the first 120 times I try it, but worth adding to the "I gotta try this" list once the water gets warm.

One thing Leon seems to do in that video is lean way back as he's executing it, so that the recovery is a hip-snap. I still don't understand the blade position in that maneuver. Can someone explain how he positions the blade? Is it mainly a support position - or is it an honest-to-god steering stroke?

Seems pretty innocuous. I just dart across the channel when it's relatively clear and stay out of the way.

Good topic. I always loved canoeing - Boundary Waters, Algonquin, Maine, Northern Quebec. I dropped off that somewhat when I moved to Boston - mainly children and time commitments. My wife found a house to rent at the Cape - we now own it. I'm kind of an introvert, and with a lot of guests, I had to get away, so I started fishing off a jetty. Then I learned to fly-fish - even tied my own wet flies. I did pretty well, until one year, I got skunked - nothing. Then, I saw some late teens pull up a kayak - point to a feeding frenzy and paddle out in a rec kayak. The came back with a bunch of fish that they caught just outside of my range of casting. I said to myself "I have to get one of those…" I got a rec kayak and learned how to fly fish out of it - mainly trolling. That was fun and productive. I rented rec kayaks off of Little Cranberry and got caught in the fog once - not a big deal, but then I saw some people wearing wetsuits, and realized that the water up there was pretty damn cold, so I got a wetsuit. Then, I was paddling on Columbus Day weekend 2003. I went out without a wetsuit, but quickly got chilled, so I went back and put it on. Then I went out in the sun - fog eventually rolled in. I used the wind as a natural compass. The next day I found that two women were lost in the fog bank that I was in - eventually the body of one was found. That incident kicked me into high gear in many ways. One of them was getting a decent kayak and start to learn the important stuff. I took a class in rolling early on, figuring it would be helpful if I was pushing the limits of my abilities. I spent the next summer working almost exclusively on my rolls and paddling distance. At that point, I did the thing of taking a bunch of classes, got jazzed up about BCU ratings and all that. I kind of fell off that and began looking more for the camping experience and just getting out. So, that's where I am now. From time-to-time, I think about going back to the courses and doing X* things - probably would be a good thing, force me to get my CPR going again, WFA, that sort of thing, but I confess to being lazy and my time is mostly just going out paddling and camping. There's something about seeing a sunset on a craggy island off the coast of Maine, with your tent up, and sipping wine, talking about the day with friends - magic!

I played around with balloons on my own for this kind of thing. I purchased some weather balloons and helium to inflate them (yes, had fun sounding like Mickey Mouse). They didn't work very well in winds above 10 knots - just got blown sideways and no amount of line payed out would get them more aloft. Maybe this one is different than my experiments, but I rapidly gave up after four or so attempts.

With some trepidation on taking the analogy too far, this is more soft-core-ish than your standard Go-Pro tide race/wind swept videos. Nice photos!

You're welcome! I'd heard a critique that the variation lines will obscure important features, such as rocks or a buoy. I grabbed one of mine at random and scanned it. You can see them attached. Even when the line drawn goes right over a feature, like a rock or a buoy, it's still plainly visible. The main thing is to use a relatively sharp and narrow pencil, and not a thick sharpie.

Pru - exactly!! Does anyone remember trying to dry socks in front of a campfire on a cold night?

OK, I cleaned up some of the details and provided an introductory piece that also has a table of contents. Although I'm sure there are some errors left in the entire series, I consider this reasonably complete and am grateful for some of the suggestions and discussions I've had - corrected some major errors on my part. Here's the introduction. Corrections, comments still welcome, of course!

Hi, Leon - Yes, it's a pretty good graphic and description. Good thing it's out there. John

I hope this one is attached - it's a simple marked up map of Isle au Haut. Not a big deal, but I did it with Illustrator. Topo hike marked.pdf

Here's a link to a series of posts I put up that are based on two workshops I gave last winter. This includes how I mark up charts. http://artofwayfinding.blogspot.com/2014/11/on-go-navigation.html Mainly, I keep the chart orientation as is, but I have lines that point along the magnetic lines spaced apart by one nautical mile, so I can readily get distance information as well as bearings. I've marked up real charts by hand, but I've also downloaded charts and used Adobe illustrator to mark up and annotate charts (e.g. current directions, timing, speeds).

Quoth Phil "For analysis sake, I modeled a perfect sine curve spread out over six hours. As I understand the "rules", the perfect curve doesn't have to be 6 hours. If that's the case (say a 4 hour slack to slack period), you'd just break the time into sixths. If the change in current speed has two peaks or isn't well modeled by a sine wave, everybody's projections fall apart." And the rest. Yes, it's mainly a question of how you can approximate a sine curve - many ways of doing that - for me the 1:2:3:3:2:1 is easiest to remember, and I just have to know where to put the 1's and the 3's for tide height versus current, and then even interpolate. There are some interesting currents that are off the 6 hour (12minute) timing. Slack to ebb at Hull Gut is about 2 hours or even less.

I'm not 100% sure that I followed what you did in the blue curve, but I think that what you did with the red curve should give you a better approximation because you're evaluating the change on either side of the hour, as opposed to taking it on a particular hour, which will give you a systematic offset in time, which seems to be the case.