josko

Bare hands. Guess they were number (dumber???) than I thought 'cause I was completely unaware of the blood blister until well after the paddle.

I was out in Boston harbor this Sunday (11/3) in some lively conditions, and after return, noticed I had a whopper of a blood blister on one of my fingers. It wasn't that long a paddle, but it WAS cold (snowed a bit at put-in). I now wonder if cold and numb hands are more susceptible to blisters. I really never noticed it on the water or felt any discomfort and was really surprised to see it when we sat down to a post-paddle snack in Winthrop. Is there any connection between cold, numb hands and propensity to blistering?

Nope - I didn't make it. Overprotecting my paddlers was the main reason.

Rule #1 of Arctic exploration: don't eat yellow snow!

From an outsiders' point of view, NSPN could use a few more trips. I've been lurking and posting here occasionally but really looking for an opportunity to meet you on the water. Either I'm looking in the wrong place, or there re precious few trips being announced here. I understand there were more NSPN trips in years past. Could that be linked to a membership dip?

Suz, thanks for responding so promptly. I'm obviously intersted in dry suit repair, but also in any other field repair you may choose to cover. We'll definitely send at least one person from our group to your workshop.

Ripping up your drysuit in cold weather can quickly become a serious matter. Is there a (Kokatat) dry suit field repair kit and/or instructions somewhere on how to replace a gasket, fix a major tear, zipper failure etc? I'm planning a long camping trip, and could use help in larning what i can repair in the tfield, and assembling a kit to help me do it. Any help appreciated.

I sort of have access to a test tank: http://en.openei.org/wiki/Carderock_Tow_Tank_3 but am not sure what information that would provide, even if we tested both configurations in waves with a paddler aboard. What I do know is that in my P&H Bahiya I can average 7 knots on a good 20 kt downwind run in Buzzards bay (from Woods Hole to the canal radar station), while in the Stellar SEI surf ski I can average ~9.5 knots in similar conditions. The rudder makes all the difference in being able to stay on wave and set up for an adjacent wave.

Thank you! Just what i was looking for.

Can anyone explain the reasoning behind; 'Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning.' What adverse weather phenomenon is forecast by a red glow in the morning? I can see reason behind ; 'Red glow at night, sailors delight.' because a red sunset indicates an absence of clouds for quite a distance to the west, but a meteorological explanation for the 'dawn' phrase eludes me. I underrstand the phase dates back to biblical times. Maybe it makes sense in the Middle East, but does a red dawn portend anything here in New England? I looked at Wikipedia, but their article doesn't really say much.

I spent some time practicing angled surfing this weekend in fairly small stuff. The 1/cos(angle) wasn't a huge deal; what was getting me was the difference in orbital velocities between the trough and crest. That is, water at the wave crest is moving faster (downsea) than water in the troughs, and that tends to torque the hull broadside. Wth edging and sweeping I could just maintain an angle up to ~45 or so, but it was constant work. I was also noticing that at slower speeds, my boat (Romany Surf) responds well to outside edge- edging, but when it starts planing, It wants to carve on the inside edge. As i (slowly) got the hang of it, it seemed that the way to recover from a too-high angle (incipient broach) was to build up boatspeed and really lay the boat over on the inside edge. About half the time, it would bring me back into control and angle I wanted - I wonder if I was freeing the bow and stern from the adverse water forces acting to broach me. The other half of the time, well, my roll got better.

Has anybody here spent time sea kayaking Labrador north of Goose Bay? We're hoping to go up next summer, and i'd love to contact someone with first-hand experience. Thanks in advance.

I think surfing at high angle in a sea kayak is doable, but requires a set of skills I don't (now) have. I'm catching myself with longer and more controllable high angle rides, and am starting to be able to identify and isolate what caused a particular broach. My motivation is to be able to surf Vineyard Sound and Buzzards bay in a Broader range of wind directions than I now can, and am curious whether other people had come up with the same problem and had been able to address it. IMHO, surfing and then riding the troughs is the pits! There's got to be a better way.

So, if the desired course is, say 45 degrees from the wave direction, what's the best strategy to cover water? Surf downwind and then ride in the trough? By the way, do rudder boats and/or surfskis do better when surfing at an angle?

<p>I'm becoming comfortable surfing downwind in wind waves; a favorite trip is from Woods Hole to Cuttyhunk in the morning, and then surfing back downwind in the afternoon seabreeze. I've been able to average ~6-7 knots for the return leg in ideal conditions and am having a blast linking waves and learning to keep my speed up. </p> <p> </p> <p>I'm generally fine if my destination is within 15 degrees of dead downwind. If it's at a higher angle, say 30 deg. (to dead downwind) my boat tends to broach, and in general, I have a hard time tracking in the desired direction. I've fiddled with my skeg, various rudders, draws, and positioning on the waveface, but am still having a hard time.</p> <p>What can I do to learn to get better at downwind surfing at increasing angles from dead downwind. FWIW, my primary downwind surfing boat is my P&H Bahiya, but I have the same problem in my NDK Romany Surf.</p>

It's kind of amazing how hard it is to generate a leading-edge vortex on a wing blade, and how hard it is to get rid of in on a 'euro' blade. That's what got me thinking about all this. I'm starting to think that elimination of the leading edge vortex was the design criterion that led to a wing blade in th forst place.

"For the power strokes, you might consider changing the attack angle as you crank up the power (reduce it). " Yeah, I hear you. That's what I'm working on this week. It seems with the wing blade one neds to be a whole lot more careful when 'pouring on' power, than with a regular blade. But it can be made to work...

I'm referring to the forward stroke, when I'm moving the paddle outward from the catch as close to the hull as possible, to the exit which is quite a distance away from the hull. So the paddle is moving sideways through the water, with the outer edge of the blade as the leading edge, and the inner as the trailing edge. During the stroke, the paddle is acting as a lifting airfoil (hydrofoil?), and I'm assuming that one wants to maximize lift forces generated. I stumbled on this by being curious why my Ikelos generates two vortices, and my Stellar only one, for what seem like similar forward strokes. That led me to reading up on airfoil theory and potential flows, and by now I expect I've thoroughly over-complicated and confused the issue. Another relaed issue I'm struggling with is the sudden 'caving in' of the wing blade when I try to apply lots of power, for instance when trying to accelerate on a wave. I've come to think I'm seeing blade stall, as I try to generate too much force for the lateral velocity (of the blade0), and the (potential) flow suddenly detaches., I don't quite have the wherewithal to visually observe the flow at this point, but expect the paddle generates a large leading-edge vortex at this point. I don't see this behavior with thye Ikelos since the flow is already detached during my typical stroke.

So my Stellar wing really hasn't done much for my 'around Naushon island' time. I'm still at just under 4 hrs for 18 nautical miles. However, it feels more yielding than the Ikelos, and I'm wondering if I should be experimenting with a larger wing blade. If anything, I take more of a beating with the Ikelos than with the Stellar wing. I feel the eing blade wants me to push cadence beyond what I'm comfortable with. What would be the 'next' wing for me to try?

I notice that my Werner Ikelos typically leaves two vortices in the water at the start of the stroke. One comess off the leading edge of the blade, and the other off the trailing edge. My Stellar wing blade only leaves one vortex, off the trailing edge. With some practice and concentration, i can get the Ikelos leading edge vortex to disappear, or at least be much smaller than the trailing edge one, and the stroke 'feels good' when it does that. However, the trailing edge vortex grows as I put in more power with both the Ikelos and Stellar. I'm assuming these vortices are just wasted energy, and the paddler should try to minimize them. It also might explain why the wing blade is more efficient - no wasted energy in the leading edge vortex. I'm not sure whether I should be trying to minimize the size of the trailing edge vortex with either blade. Is it something arising out of a faulty stroke on my part, or is it an inherent feature of the blade design? Also, I notice that it grows proportionally to power applied - again, is this because my form degrades with power applied, or an inhwerent feature of blade design? Thanks in advance.

It's important to figure out how the water got in before attempting repairs. I would guess that a hairline crack in the shaft is more likely than water leaking past the foam plug. Fixing a crack is more involved than resealing the foam plug, and also raises questions about the shaft's integrity.

I'm sorry if I'm just not getting this, but let's assume I'm setting to paddle the 48 nauitical miles around Martha's Vineyard and decide to try to average 3.5 knots for 14 hrs of paddling, which is the fastest I think I can go for such a distance. I would argue that it's worth my while to find the most efficient stroke possible, i.e. one that uses the least amont of energy. I just don';t know what that stroke would look like, or what paddle I should try to use. I would argue it would not be the high-arm, chicken-wing stroke that seems so natural at 4.5 knots or that I see surf ski paddlers use. Come to think of it, what do real long-distance paddlers use, say the guys kayaking across the Atlantic?

I just had the same happen to my Werner Ikelos. Took it in to Carl Ladd, and he discovered a hairline crack in the shaft. He suggested we send it in to Werner in hope of a warranty repair, but no, they want $99+ shipping. Carl did say that he could do the repair himself, so maybe contacting Osprey is a reasonable option. Now that I hear that others are having this problem, I wonder if Ikelos paddle area is too large for the shaft it's mounted on.

I think this link is right on tyhe money. For me, the high-arm, chicken wing stroke just doesn't make sense at 3 knots. There is just too much body flailing compared to the amount of propulsion force required. Injecting a pause into the stroke seems to make even less sense. I'm still wondering what the ideal stroke when trying to optimize 'distance per Snickers bar' ought to look like. Greg makes a powerful case that it's the GP stroke, but i still wonder what the stroke ought to look like with a euro or wing paddle at low speeds.

Did Werner recently switch their paddle warranty from lifetime to 1 year?