@kayamedic said:
My Rapid Fire is pretty much happy to paddle wherever I want it toNo real tendency to weathercock.
I’m with you, but still waiting for the official answer from Pagayeur
Pag I think is just funning… He is not a student… Nor a troll. I have known him from years and learned solo from him. Must be cold down there in the bayou.
I have never heard of a canoe designed to weather helm, but it is better to weather helm than to have a design that suffers from the opposite, that is lee helm.
Dirk Barends
I want to try the quiz. I can see where pagayeur might have concerns with the video. It seems oversimplified with assumptions that are not stated.
- canoes are designed to weathercock - false - seems silly
- stronger j-strokes needed to counteract offside headwinds - true - assuming the boat is trimmed neutral or bow light and assuming that a stronger J means a more aggressive correction at the end. But this would be false for a solo paddler sitting way forward in a prospector because the boat would turn into the wind all by itself
- strong onside headwinds can be corrected with sweep strokes. Um - no. False. If you do a sweep while experiencing a strong onside headwind you are going to make a u-turn if you are trimmed neutral or bow light.
I’ve got a Swift Osprey which seems to be the poster child for being difficult to manage in a strong quartering tailwind. Swift says you just need to adjust the trim, and the boat has a sliding seat which makes it easy. For sure trim adjustments can help reduce weather cocking effects but at same time I agree with one statement that I found online that says you really don’t want to go too crazy with trim adjustments, especially on rivers, since big changes from neutral trim make the boat more squirrelly…which isn’t good if you are also dealing with current.
Why isn’t it easier to find a clear explanation of the physics online?
Because the physics depends on underwater hull form and wind strength and swell and rocker. Just learn to deal with it. Years ago I read that kayaks were designed to weathercock for safety reasons… Leecocking is less stable ( stern to the wind) than weathercocking if the paddler is incapacitated
http://www.kayakforum.com/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/guille/wiki.pl?Weathercocking
I love to paddle solo canoes and have fun on the water. When not in a boat, I like to study the subject of solo canoeing ( paddling a hull which allows one to do cross bow strokes). I see videos like this and as TomL said, I’m concerned with the amount of mis-information I see out there. I also know that for every question about canoeing there are many different opinions. Long story short, to promote objectivity, I did not offer my personal opinion, preferring to couch this as a question. It ended up sounding like a quiz, which was not my intention. So for what it’s worth here is my take away on this video segment.
First, paddling a solo hull in the wind is a complex subject due to the large number of variables that might dictate what is required. Second, the term “weather cocking” is taken from sailing and does not translate perfectly to canoeing and the result is sometimes confusing. Having said that, let’s examine the first statement, “Canoes are designed to weather cock and will always turn into the wind”. I know of no canoe designers who use this as a parameter for canoe design, nor do I know any canoe that will always turn into the wind. If you are turning into the wind every time then you are clearly bow heavy and need to adjust trim or pitch. The effects of wind on a solo canoe are easy to study. Get into a trimmed solo canoe, in water not dominated by waves or current, in a breeze, then stop paddling. The breeze will turn the hull broadside and push it sideways in the direction the wind is blowing. Then move yourself or gear forward so that the canoe is bow-heavy and do not paddle. The hull will gradually turn into the wind (wind in the face) and maintain that course. If you are fortunate enough to be headed in that direction, this will contribute greatly to tracking. Then try loading the stern and not paddling. The canoe will gradually turn all the way around until the wind is at your back and maintain that position. So, notwithstanding waves and current, canoes do not always turn into the wind depending on pitch or trim.
Next discussed was paddling in wind from the offside and onside. IMO, they just got these terms reversed because the action they suggest is the exact opposite of what I would advise. Let’s talk about offside wind first. To avoid confusion we’ll drop “offside” and “onside” and use the terms “right” and “left” instead. So, you’re paddling along on the right side and a breeze comes up from left to right. According to our empirical experiment above, it will want to turn the hull broadside to the direction of the wind, in this case the bow will be pushed toward the right. So, how does a paddler offset this force? We know that an uncorrected forward stroke will cause the bow to yaw to the left. This would offset the force of the breeze and allow the desired course to be maintained. In a heavy wind, sweeps might be necessary to achieve this offset. Unless I misinterpret, the video recommends forward with heavy corrections, which in this situation would result in a U-turn. Conversely, when paddling on the right, if a breeze comes up from the right (blowing right to left) the bow will be pushed to the left. At that point forward strokes with heavy correction will yaw the bow to the right, offsetting the left blowing breeze and allow the paddler to maintain course. The vid seems to suggest the opposite.
So IMO the 3 statements in this segment are plainly misinformation and could make a beginners day mighty long.
I would tend to agree generally with Pagayeur’s last comments. In my hands, different canoes do different things in response to wind and they certainly don’t all tend to weathercock. Quite a few solo canoes are set up with a seat position that renders them slightly bow light. Couple this with the fact that many canoes have asymmetrical sheer height with greater depth and windage in the bow than the stern. The combination of more bow windage and less bow weight makes for a boat that tends to leecock or turn broadside to the wind, especially in response to wind coming from a forward quarter.
I paddled many miles in a rather large solo canoe (Mad River Traveler) on a big lake that often got windy. It was set up with a sliding center seat that made it easy to trim bow light, bow heavy, or neutral, and I frequently adjusted the seat position to give the boat a tendency to either weathercock or leecock, depending on wind direction.
I have paddled a lot of highly rockered whitewater solo canoes. It is not all that uncommon to be lined up entering or within a rapid when a big gust of wind comes up and knocks the boat off course. In my recollection, when this happens it is much more common for the bow to be blown downstream than upstream.
And some boats have a definite tendency to turn broadside to the wind and lock into that orientation. The boat in which I have experienced this most notably is the long, skinny Wenonah Voyageur which has a lot of windage when paddled unloaded. I have seen and felt this boat turn broadside to a stiff wind and skate laterally across the water. When that happens, with so much boat sticking out in front of and behind the paddler, it requires a very determined effort to get either end to turn up into the wind.
@pblanc said:
I would tend to agree generally with Pagayeur’s last comments. In my hands, different canoes do different things in response to wind and they certainly don’t all tend to weathercock. Quite a few solo canoes are set up with a seat position that renders them slightly bow light. Couple this with the fact that many canoes have asymmetrical sheer height with greater depth and windage in the bow than the stern. The combination of more bow windage and less bow weight makes for a boat that tends to leecock or turn broadside to the wind, especially in response to wind coming from a forward quarter.I paddled many miles in a rather large solo canoe (Mad River Traveler) on a big lake that often got windy. It was set up with a sliding center seat that made it easy to trim bow light, bow heavy, or neutral, and I frequently adjusted the seat position to give the boat a tendency to either weathercock or leecock, depending on wind direction.
I have paddled a lot of highly rockered whitewater solo canoes. It is not all that uncommon to be lined up entering or within a rapid when a big gust of wind comes up and knocks the boat off course. In my recollection, when this happens it is much more common for the bow to be blown downstream than upstream.
And some boats have a definite tendency to turn broadside to the wind and lock into that orientation. The boat in which I have experienced this most notably is the long, skinny Wenonah Voyageur which has a lot of windage when paddled unloaded. I have seen and felt this boat turn broadside to a stiff wind and skate laterally across the water. When that happens, with so much boat sticking out in front of and behind the paddler, it requires a very determined effort to get either end to turn up into the wind.
Yes, it does.
Voyager sounds much worse than Osprey. Osprey just gets tail-happy in super strong quartering tailwinds to the point where you may not be able to control it with forward strokes but worst case you just drag the paddle like a rudder to straighten out and if you ever did get broadside to the wind the boat is happy to turn upwind again and start over.
Interesting that the Voyager gets almost perfect 5 star ratings in the Reviews even with many warnings about wind. Maybe all else is forgiven when it’s so fast? Maybe quirky boats are more lovable than predictable ones?
I wish I had a video of the effect i described in my earlier post during the 90-mile race in the Adirondacks. Most of the canoes in the group ahead of me were C2 tandem racers, with a few solo boats included. Experienced canoe racers who very well know proper boat trim bow to stern. As soon as they passed the rock outcrop and entered the broad part of the lake with the strong crosswind, it was as if a switch was thrown and they all, almost in unison, turned into the wind and you could see them stuggling while paddling on the windward side to head back to proper course. The same happened to me a few minutes later when I reached the same spot and crosswind.
But were they actually travelling the proper course while misaligned? Thats happened to me on big lake crossings with intense wind funnelling… I am curious. I usually get blown bow crosswise when trying to enter a wind funnel from a wind eddy.
@Pagayeur said:
Next discussed was paddling in wind from the offside and onside. IMO, they just got these terms reversed because the action they suggest is the exact opposite of what I would advise. Let’s talk about offside wind first. To avoid confusion we’ll drop “offside” and “onside” and use the terms “right” and “left” instead. So, you’re paddling along on the right side and a breeze comes up from left to right. According to our empirical experiment above, it will want to turn the hull broadside to the direction of the wind, in this case the bow will be pushed toward the right.
Ooops. Something wrong with your reasoning there. Remember that the video contains advice for a canoe which weathercocks. We can discuss whether it should weathercock or not, but weathercocking is the stated premise in the video. Consequently, we will have to judge their advice in the light of this premise.
So the question we should ask ourselves is: “Will the instructions in the video work on a boat which is weathercocking?”
Ok. Back to your example.
A wind comes from the left. In a weathercocking boat, this will cause the boat to turn left. So you will have to do something in your strokes to make the boat turn more towards the right. If I am not mistaken, if you are paddling on the right side, that “something” could be a J-stroke.
Sorry, but the logic of the video seems sound to me.
@kayamedic said:
But were they actually travelling the proper course while misaligned? Thats happened to me on big lake crossings with intense wind funnelling… I am curious. I usually get blown bow crosswise when trying to enter a wind funnel from a wind eddy.
Absolutely not. The strong crosswind was 90 degrees to the desired proper course. An unwanted forced turn into that wind was a waste of distance, time, and energy.
I understand the bearing was wrong… but what was their track? I have done this so often and wound up exactly where I wanted even pointed the wrong way! Perhaps not the speed they wanted.
I generally agree with Pag on this, but also with the specific item pointed out by Allen Olsen, that for a boat that weathercocks, the advice in the video makes sense.
As to the affects of wind on a solo canoe being “easy to study”, I think it’s actually rather complex. Using the canoe-like boat referred to in my earlier post as an example, it’s true that if I let the guide-boat just drift sideways in the wind, it will be perfectly perpendicular to the wind, and yes, shifting the weight a little forward or back will cause the boat to “weather vane” a little or a lot, depending on how far the weight is shifted. BUT, and this is critically important, a boat that is moving forward at speed through the water is a whole different animal than one that is stationary (that is, stationary other than sideways drifting due to wind). That’s where weathercocking induced by the stern getting “looser” with increasing forward speed becomes a factor. In fact, if I’m out in the guide-boat in a wind of 30 mph or more, I can literally “get stuck” sideways against the wind, and trying to pivot the boat to point some other direction, which is normally a piece of cake with oars, can’t be done. However, if I simply crank up some forward power and get up to 5 mph or so, it then becomes quite easy to turn the boat into the wind, and relatively easy to turn in some other direction, but turning into the wind comes most naturally once up to speed. How fast the boat is moving forward through the water makes all the difference when it comes to whether or not, and how strongly, the boat tends to weathercock. I don’t see this as a simple thing because no combination of forward speeds or wind speeds results in the same strength of weathercocking.
The situation I describe above works in a canoe too, but compared to a guide-boat, solo canoes are extremely handicapped in strong wind so the principle I tried to describe is much more difficult to recognize (to illustrate what I mean, I don’t know many people who can easily exceed 5 mph in a solo canoe while going crosswise to a 25- or 30-mph wind while in waves that are shoulder or head high).
Other things mentioned by Pag and Pete I agree with, such as the idea that in a lot of canoes, natural trim is a little bit bow-light, and at typical canoe speeds, the resulting looseness of the bow (sometimes accentuated by greater sheer up front) is likely to exceed the degree of loosening undergone by the stern (though with most boats, that situation WILL reverse itself if the boat moves fast enough in the forward direction). That observation explains the earlier failure of my memory regarding which way my current canoes tend to turn in a cross wind, or at least that I seem to recall that it’s a greater struggle to turn upwind than downwind in many cases which of course results in a paddling recommendation that is opposite that provided by the video. That of course brings up Allen Olsen’s comment, which puts that in proper perspective instead of just saying the video is wrong.
And some boats have a definite tendency to turn broadside to the wind and lock into that orientation. The boat in which I have experienced this most notably is the long, skinny Wenonah Voyageur which has a lot of windage when paddled unloaded. I have seen and felt this boat turn broadside to a stiff wind and skate laterally across the water. When that happens, with so much boat sticking out in front of and behind the paddler, it requires a very determined effort to get either end to turn up into the wind.<
This reminds me of my first attempt to solo paddle a Wenonah Jensen 18. This was long ago (but not so far away) on a fairly small lake. I don’t think that the breeze was that strong, but I had a heck of a time turning into the wind so I could return to the launch.
@kayamedic said:
I understand the bearing was wrong… but what was their track? I have done this so often and wound up exactly where I wanted even pointed the wrong way! Perhaps not the speed they wanted.
I could plainly see that the boats ahead of me, and then when it was my turn, that the effect was to take us well off the desired track toward the end of the lake. We were in fact making progress off the desired track line, upwind into the bay, not toward the end of the lake where we wanted to go. Eventually as the lake narrowed again all were able to correct course to the beginning of the river at the end of the lake where it narrowed with protection from the wind (although a couple of boats capsized in their attempt - I witnessed a C6 voyageur canoe go over as it passed the rocky outcrop and I later heard of others as well). It was not an easy thing to do after an offtrack side excursion into the bay.
I disagree with the idea that canoes always weathercock. Weathercocking is only possible at the behest of the paddler who can by changing the position of the load on a hull cause it to weathercock or not. If the paddler has done those things that results in a weathercocking hull that means the hull has turned upwind and so is facing in the same exact direction from which the wind is coming. and so when the wind shifts the canoe will shift in conformity and will stay facing upwind. In that case there is no wind from the left or right there is only upwind and normal forward strokes will keep a straight course with small adjustments toward either the right or left as needed. But only rarely is one’s destination exactly the same trajectory as the wind, so paddlers should know what strokes are needed to paddle in a wind that is not exactly in their face> @Allan Olesen said:
@Pagayeur said:
Next discussed was paddling in wind from the offside and onside. IMO, they just got these terms reversed because the action they suggest is the exact opposite of what I would advise. Let’s talk about offside wind first. To avoid confusion we’ll drop “offside” and “onside” and use the terms “right” and “left” instead. So, you’re paddling along on the right side and a breeze comes up from left to right. According to our empirical experiment above, it will want to turn the hull broadside to the direction of the wind, in this case the bow will be pushed toward the right.Ooops. Something wrong with your reasoning there. Remember that the video contains advice for a canoe which weathercocks. We can discuss whether it should weathercock or not, but weathercocking is the stated premise in the video. Consequently, we will have to judge their advice in the light of this premise.
So the question we should ask ourselves is: “Will the instructions in the video work on a boat which is weathercocking?”
Ok. Back to your example.
A wind comes from the left. In a weathercocking boat, this will cause the boat to turn left. So you will have to do something in your strokes to make the boat turn more towards the right. If I am not mistaken, if you are paddling on the right side, that “something” could be a J-stroke.Sorry, but the logic of the video seems sound to me.
No, the vid fails immediately when the statement is made that “canoes are designed to weathercock and will always turn into the wind”. Now, I’m not a gearhead so I don’t know about every canoe out there, but I’d venture to say that none are manufactured to weathercock on their own volition. Almost every weathercock is a result of outside forces, not design. I think if a canoe has a tendency to weathercock most of the time it is due to being weighted in the bow and can be remedied by moving the seat astern or whatever is needed to trim the pitch.
The more likely thing for an instructor to say, is that all canoes will be turned by wind and here’s what to do when that happens. If that is the case the they are mixed up and I stand by my methods.
@Pagayeur said:
No, the vid fails immediately when the statement is made that “canoes are designed to weathercock and will always turn into the wind”.
This is getting silly.
As I said, you can discuss the premise - that the boat will weathercock. If I am in a kayak which weathercocks, I will first try to stop the weathercocking with trim or skeg, instead of using corrective strokes. So I think we think very much alike on that point.
(But I will also say that default behaviour for a boat is to weathercock at speed. If the boat is perfectly balanced at standstill so it neither weathercocks nor leecocks, it will weathercock when it gets forward speed. This has been perfectly explained by Guideboatguy. And those of us who paddle symmetrically in both sides probably notice it more because it is not disguised by asymmetrical paddling. So weathercocking should not just get dismissed.)
Anyway, once the premise of weathercocking is set, you will either have to accept it or stop watching the video or at least watch it silently. As long as the advice given in the video is true to the stated premise, you can’t fault the advice.
Your complaint can be boiled down to:
“See, these guys claim that canoes weathercock. But my canoes don’t weathercock. And that is not the worst. They also give advice about which strokes to use when a canoe weathercocks. And those strokes are clearly wrong because they don’t work in my canoes which don’t weathercock.”
I agree with both of you. I agree with Allan that if the boat is weathercocking (you would need perfect trim, symmetrical bow and stern windage and a pinned bow), the stokes described in the video would be a reasonable way to deal with that situation.
I also agree with Pagayeur that the boat in the video, which is significantly bow light, is not going to respond that way. We all know it is going to blow downwind not upwind, requiring the opposite strokes to keep it going straight.
So its a trick question. I don’t know if it is correct to say canoes are designed to weathercock, but under the right conditions they might. It is definitely wrong to say that canoes always turn into the wind.