greenland paddles - canoeing / kayaking
I disagree with your comment. I can paddle in any water my kayak can float in simply by using a sliding stroke and extending the paddle out to catch the water at a very low angle. I believe the Euro blade is at a disadvantage.
A well-aerated hole…
…will not allow you to slide-stroke your way out of it - there is simply no “density” to aerated water - you don’t get any traction with a narrow blade. Greenland paddle is excellent on the ocean, with waves and high winds, but on a Class III run with obstacles and need for fast precise maneuvering? It would be border-line suicidal. There is an obvious explanation why is it so too - the inuit never paddles fast rivers. The main advantages of a GP turn into major disadvantages once you move away from the conditions it was designed and developed for for over 2000 years.
Hull shape
Pay attention to what Charlie Wilson said for shape of faster hull in shallow water.
I owned a Bell Rob Roy (moderate Swede form hull) and used it a number of times in a shallow river that lead into a lake. I subsequently sold it to a friend and bought a Rapidfire. Paddling that same shallow river, the Rapidfire felt noticeably slower than the Rob Roy. When I entered the lake the Rapidfire felt noticeably faster than the Rob Roy had felt.
I discussed these observations with Charlie. He explained what I felt in the river vs. lake while paddling the two different hull shapes as being a direct result of the hull shapes.
Dave
Racing
That’s very interesting - Olympic-style racing boats (kayak and canoe) seem to all be strongly Swede-form, which makes sense as the race courses are generally shallow water, i.e. depth on the order of half the hull length or less.
I’ll take a stab at it
Boy it’s been a long time since fluids class and I think I got a C, but since I paddle and have rowed a lot of shallow suck water, here goes.
In shallow water I think the problem is your bow wave reflecting off of the bottom and hitting the boat. In this case a longer boat could have this phenomena act soon as half the boat length is soon. However practical evidence leads me to think that this effect is very small in waters greater than 4 feet, so no advantage to ether boat length in my mind.
The other way to reduce this effect is to minimize the bow wake; in that case the pointier boat is better.
I’ve seen this work well in the French Broad Classique. The long flat-water race boats and multi-sport boats do best; unless, you miss a maneuver because the boat is long and harder to turn. In that case the 15 to 16 foot flatwater K1’s usually beat the longer multi-sport boats.