JohnHuth

Congratulations to Pru and Cathy - well deserved, and a great party, too.

Chicken with home-made garlic cumin mayonaise - I guess an entrée Oh, and please no dried kale.

Leon - For me, I use an extended paddle roll and don't use inflation. Typically when I wet exit, when I pull the rip-cord, before going out, there's one hand on the paddle and the other on the cockpit combing, and I exit on the windward side. I don't worry about the pump, but it's on the foredeck. Then, I tilt the cockpit out of the water and start to get my legs in, then return under water, and get myself all positioned, then use the extended paddle roll to come but, but am immediately ready to brace as the darn thing is a lot more unstable. Then, use the paddle on the upwind side to brace, pull out the pump and pump like crazy until I begin to regain stability. It takes a bit of anticipation of approaching waves, but is doable unless they're breaking on you. That's kind of the way I handle it, but maybe someone else had a better variant. Main thing is one hand on the kayak and one on the paddle when I'm out of the cockpit. John

It's all about having fun! Don't make things miserably unnecessarily.

BTW, I haven't found the adage to be all that trustworthy - it's failed on many occasions. I've seen plenty of nice days after a red sunrise, and some bad weather after a red sunset. Generally, it's the coloration of clouds where the setting sun shines on the underside of the clouds, just at the horizon.

The Pharisees and Sadducees came to Jesus and tested him by asking him to show them a sign from heaven. He replied, “When evening comes, you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red,’ and in the morning, ‘Today it will be stormy, for the sky is red and overcast.’ You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times. A wicked and adulterous generation looks for a miraculous sign, but none will be given it except the sign of Jonah.” Jesus then left them and went away Matthew 16 1-4 Just in case you were curious.

I'll second what Pru says, Great Heart is an excellent read. It mixes fact and creates a semi-fictional account of the original expedition, and the subsequent expeditions by Dillon Wallace and Mina Hubbard (Hubbard's widow) who both completed the trip Hubbard originally proposed. It also has a number of photos from all three expeditions, and good maps.

I don't know if anyone is interested in freshwater trips - possibly Spider (and me). There's a riveting story told in an old book, called The Lure of the Labrador Wild by Dillon Wallace. It describes an ill-fated trip into Labrador. If you are mildly interested, I posted a map here: http://artofwayfinding.blogspot.com/2013/09/map-of-hubbard-wallace-elson-1903-trip.html There's some text that describes the journey. If you're into this kind of expedition writing, it's definitely worth the read.

I zig zag in that situation - typically try to catch a set, and then just plain paddle to regain my heading, then catch a set again. But, that's me.

I have a Wilderness Systems 170, and often paddle without the skeg. With a quartering wind from behind, weather cocking can be a problem. Sweep strokes on one side and short straight strokes on the other are what I do - pretty simple. The waves can push you, too, and then I'll use some stern rudder to correct. I think the issue is that we all suffer from this to some degree, and just get used to it, but one side of your torso gets a workout and the other doesn't. I often lean forward to 'help' the trim. Mainly, the bow is getting locked by the bow wave, and the stern is free to pivot in the wind. A skeg can counter the pivoting, but lacking that, it's just paddle hard on one side and light on the other, and use leaning to help the turn.

Ay caramba! The entire hull? You *sure* you want to do that? What about maybe having someone sand down the nasty spots and then gel-coat those? My ten year old was showing all signs of wear and tear on a paddle in early March, so I took it over to Karl Ladd and asked him to have at it. He took out some cracky-regions like in your photo and re-gel coated them and put on a keel strip. Karl used to work at a shipyard, and has all the stuff for this kind of repair. I've done some gel-coating repairs and it was painful, so I was happy to send Karl some business this time out.

Is that really in the fiberglass or just on the gel-coat?

I second that motion.

For the savants, I'm attaching a figure that shows what happens in a stall. The attack angle becomes too high. There's a pressure distribution on the upper surface of the wing. The "favorable" pressure gradient sucks the air over the wing in the direction of motion. The "adverse" gradient 'wants to' suck it back, but the inertia of the flow keeps it going and laminar over the wing. If the attack angle gets too large, the adverse pressure gradient becomes too large and the vortices on the trailing edge get sucked in - the laminar flow becomes detached, and turbulence penetrates from the rear, which creates a stall. For the case of a paddle, it will twist.

I'm attaching an illustration of what's going on with the Kelvin circulation theorem and wings. You get vortices peeling off the trailing edges, but the circulation theorem says that you have to get some counter-rotating flow. That counter-rotation goes all the way around the wing. Now, if you add an overall velocity going from left to right, there is a higher velocity on top and a lower velocity on the bottom - this gives lift on the upper side. So, you don't really get a leading edge vortex. For a flat blade, the sharp edges on either side with give you counter-rotationg vortices on both sides. The rounded leading part of the wing and sharp trailing edge gives rise to the overall flow around the wing.

Actually for a wing, you should be able to remove the "forward" or leading edge vortex. You're left with a trailing vortex for sure, but the Kelvin *circulation* theorem (ahem) gives a rotation all the around the wing, which is how lift is generated.

Yes, Kelvin's circulation theorem. For some reason I keep calling it "rotation theorem", because I sort of view it as the fluid mechanics equivalent of conservation of angular momentum. It's just a weird mental association I have.

The same thing that makes the wing blade more efficient, makes it more unstable.

Josko - OK, I think that what is going on is something like this - the two vortices form on the flatter blade because you mostly have turbulent flow on the forward side of the blade and the vortices are peeling off both sides of the blade, as I might expect. With the wing blade, the point of getting lift is that you have a trailing vortex, and the top side of the blade (lift side) is in laminar flow. A consequence of the trailing vortex is that Kelvin's rotation theorem sets up a counter-rotational flow around the entire wing - this combines with the blade motion to produce a faster flow on the forward (upper) edge of the wing. This gives it lift, with less drag than the "flat" blade. So, ideally, you only want that trailing vortex. The breakdown presumably happens when you have too great an attack angle for the velocity and you get turbulence that infiltrates - the asymmetry in the turbulence makes the blade unstable and it'll flip one way or the other. Depending on whether it's a detached bubble on the leading edge or the turbulence infiltrates from the trailing edge, the blade will twist one way or the other. For the power strokes, you might consider changing the attack angle as you crank up the power (reduce it).

If the flow detaches, you should be able to see turbulent behavior on the top edge of the wing blade. When it detaches, do you see as a growth of the trailing vortex, or the leading edge, as a detached bubble that grows? Yeah, in either case, it would be a stall. Typically a stall is when laminar flow breaks down on the upper surface and turbulent infiltrates. I have to go out and play with my stroke to see which way the vortices swirl.

Is this on a forward stroke or a steering stroke? If so, how do you define "leading edge" and "trailing edge"? In some cases, vortices create lift around the paddle, particularly for steering - so in that case the vortex is helping you by creating a rotational flow in the opposite direction giving you lift. In any case, Kelvin's rotation theorem says that for any rotation created in one direction, you get equivalent rotation in the other in a fluid - it may just be that it circulates around the paddle and doesn't manifest itself as a vortex.

Minimum number? Not to revisit the issue, but I often don't read this section of the Forum. My WFA is expired and I haven't done the water-based one. I'm thinking about trying it, if people want to make a go of it in the future. Maybe we can use the main forum to see who is interested? It seems to me this is kind of general - you'd get a larger audience.

Thanks for posting that. I've taken courses from Leon and Shawna. It sounds like a fantastic time!

I posted this, with some photos and some more details, in case anyone is interested: http://artofwayfinding.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-string-leading-to-heaven.html

Gary - It was on the ebb as far as Bath was concerned. Low tide in Bath was around 16:00, and we went through Lower Hell Gate around 10:30-11 or so, and Upper Hell Gate around 11:30-12. So, past high tide, but not really into what I imagine would be full ebb current. What's a little harder to figure out is what the tide cycle is for Hockomock Bay, as this is intermediate, and I don't know how long it takes for the Kennebec to drain. Dan told me that the Kennebec is tidal up to Augusta, where there's maybe 1 ft of tide - that's a lot of volume of water. John