That pic was taken on the Green River in Utah with several p-netters.
We were on day 5 of 10 and many miles from civilization when we heard someone yelling and throwing rocks from on-top of a 600 ft cliff. He was obviously lost and in a bad situation. We were in the process of pulling over to make a satellite-phone rescue call when we heard the “whomp-whomp-whomp” of a helicopter coming up the river valley. The helicopter was way too low to see the distressed victim so we all waved our paddles and pointed upwards. The pilot understood our message and circled back to the cliff to rescue the young man who had been separated from his mountain biking group and spent 24+ hours wandering the desert without food or water. After the rescue the helicopter circled back for a high speed pass to thank us. After I published a video I was contacted by both the victim and the rescuers thanking us for being in the right place at the right time. I’ve spent 1000+ days on the water and this still remains one of the high points of my paddling career.
That was amazing too. How many Clippers were on that trip? There was one in front, was the video taken from anther Clipper you were in? One cool helicopter pilot.
Four guys can get along paddling one canoe, sounds hard to do.
Most canoes and kayaks are displacement hulls and can only gather speed up to the point that they cannot lift themselves out of their own wake. Longer displacement hull boats are almost always faster than shorter displacement hull boats … so a 22’ boat will generally be faster than a 16’ boat.
I worked there for 18 years and still miss the place. I’ve thought about closing my studio for a few months just so I could camp in their parking lot and run river trips for another summer.
BMO and the Susquehanna remind me of my well spent youth.
We had the only Clipper Mariner on that trip. I don’t know the exact numbers but I don’t think there are very many in existence. I personally only know of 2. I bought mine used from a defunct youth-at-risk program in Bend Oregon. Thankfully I have a very patient and understanding wife who let me drain our meager savings to buy my dream boat.
Our small crew gets along very well. We have all been friends for many years and know each other’s strengths and weaknesses. I would never do a long trip sharing a boat with a new partner, but I’d go anywhere in the world with those three dudes !
Well you know what I mean.
I tell you what, at a Pnet reunion, bring the Clipper and we will put @Craig_S , @szihn , @Jyak and @PaddleDog52 in it and see what happens.
Well, you know these things. That boat loaded down like that reminds me of pictures of fur traders hauling their stuff to market. That thing is like a piece of history, you have to get it out more, people have to see it and the people in it.
I know what will happen. szihn will sit back and try to learn things about paddling a canoe from the other 3. What I know about canoes fill fill a VERY VERY VERY small book.
I drive up there from Baltimore when I get money burning a hole in my pocket and need a release. Its about 2 1/2 hour drive. Support local shops. They always come through, especially with small parts. I’ve bought seat pads and new foot peg sets cheaper than I could buy them mail order.
I think it’s A Bell 407. Bell makes a lot of helos for the military. But also civilian sales. The old Huey (Slicks) from the Vietnam war and going clear though the mid 80s were all made by Bell. I rode on many of them.
That’s right, and with the hull speed being so much greater, there’s a greater separation between cruising speed and hull speed, and since the required propulsive power increases exponentially as the boat approaches hull speed, this results in an even bigger gain in efficiency.
Plus, the “boat weight per paddler” is no worse than for solo boats in this case, so each paddler isn’t needing to move a bigger mass than they would be doing in solo boats. And for any large, multi-person boat, the amount of wetted surface area per paddler and their gear is much less than it would be for solo boats, which provides another big increase in efficiency.
There are lots of people here who can make a canoe or a kayak move. Whats great abkut a well designed boatbis that it moves through the water with relatively little effort. Its when you get to around 80% of the hull speed, you will put in much greater effort to gain a smaller increment of speed. Hull speed isnt a magic number. It only shows where the boat is approaching the speed of the wave you generate. All displacement boats reach the limit based on the length. This is probably an over simplification, but it really doesn’t matter. Draft of the boat, shape of the chine, beam width, shape of the bow/stern, and hull form determines how quickly you reach speed, how much effort it takes, and how well the boat glides. Unless you have a specially designed hull, or a boat like a catamaran, all displacement hulls get caught between the bow wave and the water displaced by the passing boat (notice how a wall of water piles up behind a speed boat when it stops abruptly). The yrick is finding the sweet spot, which is where “most” people paddle.
I hear that the military is granted the occasional rescue mission into Grand Canyon for their training. A guide there told the story of a rescue by blackhawk helicopter.
On a different trip that I was on, we had to call in a rescue for one of our hikers on a remote Utah trip around the Rainbow Trail.
You have to understand how the wave length builds and lengthens as the boat speed increases. The way to visualuze it is how It catches up and outruns the wave, but the boat speed increases the height of the wave and frequency (?), until it gets trapped between the waves. At that point, the paddle stroke pushes the bow up the peak of the wave, but once the power drops off, the boat slides back down the swell. If you watch the GPS, you eventually figure out how much your glide deteriorates at a 45 stoke per minute paddle rate and an 80 stroke per minute paddle rate. At 45 spm, you might lose .2 mph between the power strokes. At 80 spm, you can keep the glide, without needing to make up the .2 mph. Over the course of the trip, you keep making up for the deficite rather than increasing speed. Anyway, that’s the way I see it - just an opinion.
The key is finding the sweet spot, which is slightly different for every boat. Acceleration and glide will vary based on the boat’s design, but you cant get around the properties of the hull design, whether Symmetric, Fish (wide in front), or Swede form (wide in back). One is equal front/back, probably balances load easier; where the Swede and Fish form have greater buoyancy in the front or back, a 100 lb paddler and a 200 lb paddler might settle the boat differently, which would influence reactiin to weather cocking, as compared to a symmetric shape. A narrow forward section cuts through waves rather than pounding, while another shape enhances speed.
Those differences only amount to minor variations. The primary limit or the potential is still about length, and the only way around it is to plane above the trough (you’ll notice in a power boat that the bow rises significantly before transitioning to overcome the bow wave and ride above it. That takes a pointed bow and a flat stern. Racing boats might also have a step to break surface tension to rise up. It just takes more than paddle power.
