I rolled my sea kayak,a Perception Avatar, for the first time yesterday and I was using whitewater paddle, a Werner Player. I then tried to roll with my touring paddle, a Wind Swift. I first put a partly deflated float on the end and rolled easily. Took it off and no luck with the Wind Swift. It seemed to make a difference (I know I’ve been told that if you can roll you can roll anything and roll with any kind of paddle). For rolling and rough surf, do people use a paddle with a wider blade?
I use my Windswift
in almost all conditions. It rolls just fine. For surf I use a ww Lightening. Congrats on the roll… just keep working at it… The blade angle on the Windswift is probably 60 deg and on the ww paddle 30-45. That could be throwing you off…
Ultimately…
if you have your roll down, the mechanics are more dependent on your body movement than on the paddle. Thus folks ability to hand roll, elbow roll and “straight jacket” (no hand) roll.
With respect to the paddle, the offset makes more difference in helping or confusing folks than the size of the paddle.
Size of the blade and length of the paddle make more of a difference in the acceleration and ability to get out of the way in ww and surf.
sing
rolling and paddles
Thanks for the replies. Now that you mention it, I didn’t feather my touring paddle and who knows -that might make a difference. I’ll give it a try and keep working on it.
Wider blades? My blade is 3 1/2 inches!
I’ve rolled with all sorts of paddles, both feathered and non-feathered. My favorite paddles however, for both paddling and rolling, are Greenland Paddles. These have a maximum width of just 3 1/2 inches, yet they’re about the easiest type of paddle to roll with.
As Sing says though, one doesn’t even have to use a paddle for many rolls, as body movement is really the key to any roll. If you can, do try rolling with a GP (and paddle with it too!). You may just find, like me, that you’ve discovered your favorite type of paddle! 
By the way, I just got home from a lovely paddle today. I got to hang out with my favorite resident whales (Gray Whales), watch many Pelicans flying and fishing, and play in some fun waves! And as usual, the seals supervised all my activities.
Melissa
Play fair now surface area of a gp is
– Last Updated: Jul-10-05 11:41 PM EST –
about the same as a standard euro. I was a bit nervous the first few times I rolled wiht a wind swift.
On the other hand yes you should be able to do it when your roll is solid.
Greenland paddles are much easier for me to roll with than euros. working wiht a GP has helped my euro roll very much.
While I would rather play in the surf zone with a big euro blade, folks liike b nystrom say a GP works just fine for them.