I’m confused?
You saying that because the person was using the paddle unfeathered that it caused her to flip! The amount of surface area that the paddle blade has is miniscule in comparison to your body. So I think that is a lot of crap.
Wind doesn’t always come from one direction! That being said, I paddle my wing paddle unfeathered and have had no issues in the wind, no matter what direction it comes from or how windy it is. Of course I don’t paddle in hurricanes.
Telling someone to feather their paddle does not help the paddler. I’ve tried feathering and don’t like twisting my wrist to accomplish soemthing that is far easier and more powerfull unfeathered.
different opinions
– Last Updated: Jul-13-12 3:21 PM EST –
Despite what many say here and there, I switch feather position when paddling against or with the wind.
When I began to paddle, I first rented SOTs that came with fixed feathered paddles, and it was a bit strange, something my wrist had to learn. After some time my strokes were already more powerful.
Now my own paddles have 0° or +/-75° positions, and I only choose the 0° (unfeathered) position when the wind is pushing in my back. I don't see how people can paddle against any wind over say 10kn with unfeathered paddles! They must be much stronger than I am. My last acquisition are light carbon paddles with 0-65° feather and again, I use 60-65° most of the time, and 0° only downwind.
One exception is when wind and waves are so high that you begin to surf even when you don't want to - that only happened one time, while crossing between 2 islands, fully loaded kayak - and I didn't want to add any surface to the wind, so I went back to feathered position.
The change is always a bit tricky, and for some strokes (or minutes) I have to be careful and paddle a bit slower!
Side wind may be tricky too, when the wind pushes under the paddle, but if I don't feel confident, I lower my stroke, bracing as much as I push forward.
Paddling Into Wind
I have switched to a feathered orientation in fairly high winds (25 MPH), but I really didn’t find the effort during recovery to be more unpleasant than the periodic wind shifts that managed that went under the feathered paddle and tried to rip it from my hands. I guess if I paddled in sustained (and consistent) forward winds, I might learn to like a feather during these conditions, I would force myself to adjust.
Most of the places I paddle (SF Bay, parts of Monterey Bay) have fairly significant variability if wind direction and intensity, so I probably have a pretty huge bias for unfeathered paddling as a result. I also know folks who paddle the same locations who use paddle feathered, but it just doesn’t work for me.
I was amazed at how much wind can get under a paddle and, effectively, create a brace in strong winds. Heavy gusts are worst, but even sustained winds can make this a bit of a challenge to overcome. I’ve had the paddle ripped from my hand and may have capsized if I gripped it more tightly. On the days when I’ve paddled in these conditions, there haven’t been other kayakers to observe, so I can’t say I’ve seen capsizes caused by this, but I can certainly believe it could happen.
Blade size is a significant issue here (as some point out, the narrower greenland paddle designs are much less likely to produce this effect), and I just happen to have blades that are a big larger than I’d like and which make paddling feathered fairly unpleasant in high winds.
Rick
If GPs are pushed around less by wind …
… does this mean, logically and hydrodynamically, that they are less effective at pushing against water?
I perceive and experience many practical and physical benefits from paddling unfeathered. I have a hard time making sense of the arguments for feathering, which are particularly confusing and hence unpersuasive since feathering proponents argue for wildly different angles ranging from 20 degrees to 90 degrees.
The only feathering argument that makes practical sense to me is a 90 degree feather for whitewater slalom racers to cut closer to gates.
Agree about feathering vs not
Feathered covers anything that’s not zero degrees.
Well, zero is more like 15 degrees than 60 or 90 degrees is! That alone pretty much guts the argument for the Yes/No school of thought.
Try a few different ways and see what your body tells you.
The wind argument is self-canceling
As others have pointed out, wind comes from all directions, constantly changes, and all these different wind directions affect different feather angles differently. Therefore, the arguments for one particular feather angle based on wind cancel each other out.
That means the argument for feathering should be based on something other than wind – for example, some body-blade mechanical advantage contributing to in-water paddle performance, or else some sort anatomical-medical advantage.
To me, zero feather seems to be the angle that results in body-blade mechanics that are the simplest, most symmetrical, easiest to master, least likely (for me) to screw up, and hence the most predictable. Occam’s Razor. I also read zero feather has some documented medical advantages for preventing or ameliorating wrist and forearm injury.
In general, I think most people just end up preferring whatever angle they started with or get used to.
Sprint kayakers may have a different angle on this and some specialized argument like WW slalom racers, but those arguments (if they exist and are valid) may not be of practical importance to non-racing kayakers.
The Aleuts and Inuits could have carved feathered paddles over their many centuries of survival on arctic seas. Did they?
The guy who is given historical credit for popularizing the sport of “canoeing” in Europe and later in America, John MacGregor, used an unfeathered paddle akin to a GP in his Rob Roy “canoe” (and also developed some advanced paddling techniques that have rarely been matched):
http://www.paddleworld.com/story/MacGregor6.jpg
Seems to Me…
the GP is always feathered; canted forward.
Feathered doesn’t mean canted
I’m sure you know this, but just in case some newbie reader is confused: Feather refers to the angle at which the blades of a double blade paddle are offset from each other, not to the angle (cant) at which a blade enters the water at the catch.
As one who is primarily a single blading canoeist, another reason I prefer zero feather blades, especially narrow and short ones like GP storm paddles, is that you can grip them on the blade like a canoe paddle for braces, sweeps, offside duffeks, and rolls.
zero is unique
Zero degree feather is the only angle that produces right/left symmetry. Any feathering at all means what you do on one side does not translate mirror image to the other side. As someone who started out using a feathered paddle because that was the cultural norm and switched to non-feathered I have to say that “what is comfortable for you” is not a good criteria. You need to be more thoughtful than that. Anyone who learned using a feathered paddle can switch to unfeathered and that will seem most comfortable with practice. But there will be a transition period. This is probably more important in WW where instant, no thinking, bracing and rolling are important. But the payoff is worth it.
Right
I was just thinking out loud that the canted angle might reduce some wind drag.
When I used Euros I paddled unfeathered. Recently a neighbor kid asked me to teach him to roll. Someone had given him a feathered (non-adjustable) paddle and he really wanted to use it. There I was trying to teach him with a tool I never used. Pretty frustrating.
Same With My First Wing Paddle
That I bought back in 1988 from Bob Twogood, and who would remind me of this stroke defect everytime I paddled my Twogood made Chaluski surfski with him. The 214 cm. long Twogood made wing was feathered at 60 degrees and both blades entered the water with a forward cant. Since the shaft was indexed with a plastic insert and shrink wrap, the stroke defect was cured by simply removing the insert and shrink wrap. Now if I was paddling an unfeathered GP paddle, my stroke would’ve been perfect.
another opinion on feathering
Whichever angle, feathered or unfeathered, that allows you a proper stroke with no “wrist-cock” is the correct angle for you.
Mirror-image of right and left strokes
Well, we agree on that one!
It seems obvious that no-feather allows total symmetry of the right and left sides, but I’m amazed how many people here have said just the opposite. Of course, any degree of feathering CAN’T allow symmetry because one blade tilts forward on the recovery stroke and the other tilts backward, and that’s not symmetry, and the motion of the wrists which make it happen isn’t symmetrical either.
try this
Quote
“If GPs are pushed around less by wind … does this mean, logically and hydrodynamically, that they are less effective at pushing against water?”
Just for giggles try this: push your hand fast through the air and then repeat the same motion through the water. There is your answer
You misunderstood. I wasn’t clear.
I meant if GPs are pushed around less by wind THAN EURO PADDLES ARE, does this mean, logically and hydrodynamically, that GPs are less effective at pushing against water THAN EURO PADDLES ARE?
My initial answer to this conditional question is yes. No giggle.
efficiency and blade size
"If GPs are pushed around less by wind … does this mean, logically and hydrodynamically, that they are less effective at pushing against water?"
To a degree, it is actually true that a narrower blade will grab “less” water during the stroke and that there is a point where adding more power to a narrow blade may cause wobble and inefficiency. From http://tinyurl.com/8x9ampn:
“Why does the Greenland Paddle work? The answer comes from human physiology and exercise metabolism. Simply put, the the Greenland Paddle works because we humans are not all that strong. We can put about a tenth of a horsepower into a paddle when sprinting, and less when cruising. That skinny blade is plenty good and pretty efficient in transforming energy from your muscles into forward motion.
The Greenland Paddle is not a good paddle for aerobic whitewater kayaking. In playboating, the paddler needs to really grab a piece of water and hoist themselves out of an eddy or upstream RIGHT NOW. The effort takes a couple seconds and is an all-out anaerobic event like weight lifting. After moments of rest, the series of anaerobic pulls then continues. For this kind of play, the whitewater kayaker needs to have a big shovel to pull hard against the water - for a moment.
The Greenland Paddle shines when it comes to the constant effort of travel. No shovel is necessary, as the goal is adding a little extra energy with each stroke to make up for drag. (Drag is mainly due to interaction of the kayak on its wetted surface, and to some extent, interaction of the upper deck with the wind.)”
So, for the short story, you can overload a greenland kayak performing big moves in heavy water and, possibly, make it wobble a bit and lose some efficiency, but for sea kayaking, you will find that it has more than enough power for getting the job done, without tiring the paddler or transferring excessive energy to the muscles/joints of the paddler during braces/rolls.
Rick
I switched twice
Started unfeathered, then switched to a small amount of feather (15 deg.) years later, kept at that for one year. It wasn’t hard to get used to, being a smaller change of angle. I even got my “other side” roll that season which I had not done before. Made myself stick to it for a full year so that I gave it a fair chance.
Then, at the start of the next year, after an initial paddle with the 15-deg. feather, I switched to zero just to see how it felt. Switched back and forth that day. My conclusion was: Switch BACK to zero feather! Easy switch AND I kept my roll on both sides. Have not looked back since then. It feels right.
yes, they are
GPs, given the same surface area of a EP, are technically less effective at "pushing’ water.
However practicality seems to disprove theory, like many other things (like kayak stability, hull speed versus length etc.).
If one wants to purely measure the exact propulsion factor of a EP versus GP one should also consider the superior properties of wing paddles.
The fact remains that the current record around Vancouver Island is held by a GP paddler.
Of course there are many records held by EP and Wing paddles, but are they really relevant to the average paddler?
said it
said it better than I ever could.
But you forgot to factor in machismo where “mine is bigger than yours is always better” 
air, water, and the GP
"I meant if GPs are pushed around less by wind THAN EURO PADDLES ARE, does this mean, logically and hydrodynamically, that GPs are less effective at pushing against water THAN EURO PADDLES ARE?"
Good question. However by that logic, Olympic sprint athletes should be using blades the size of trash-can lids, with streamers attached, because they would be blown around more in the wind, and therefore, must be more effective in the water.
This issue is more complex than just raw blade surface area and must consider blade shape, symmetry (including feathering), and surface area distribution (high aspect versus low aspect blades). Air can, and does, hit a blade from all angles, and often from a much different orientation from how a blade interacts with water, for a normal forward stroke.
Technique also can play a role. Because your hands are closer together with a Greenland paddle you generally hold the paddle lower (and thus more protected from the wind), even when the blades are vertical for a “high stroke”. This is not intuitive, I have a blog post about this at http://www.gregstamer.com/2012/02/12/greenland-paddle-wing-paddle.
No one ever said that a Greenland paddle is unaffected by wind; a great thing about a GP is that it is very neutral in violent winds, and easy to control. The wind doesn’t “get under the blade” and forcefully lift it, nor does the paddle do strange things in violent gusts. This adds control in difficult weather conditions. Because of this neutral behavior you can keep a light grip, even when things get ugly.
Strong headwinds with a wide Greenland paddle can be a chore (if you don’t adopt techniques such as the sliding stroke to make the paddle self-feathering), but you can paddle into strong, gusty winds and still keep control. By comparison, in violent weather, a feathered paddle, especially at lower feather angles like 45 degrees, can actively try to twist in your hands, as the wind catches the alternating blade angles. Of course, a skilled kayaker can control this, and can paddle defensively to prevent a strong beam wind from lifting the wide, horizontal (non stroke-side) feathered blade and causing a capsize, but it’s one more thing to guard against when you are tired and fighting for control.
Having said all that, I’m faster with a wing than a GP in calmer conditions in an unloaded kayak, but there is a threshold of either distance, load, or condition severity at which time I am faster with the GP.
An interesting personal experience that highlights this discussion was my circumnavigation of Iceland with Freya Hoffmeister in 2008. We set out to do it fast, and we completed the journey in record time. She used an Epic large wing, and an Epic Mid-wing, 45 degree feather. I used a Superior carbon GP. We had some dead-calm days and on the flats she used the large wing. On the flats I felt I was working harder than she was, to maintain the same speed. When the wind conditions deteriorated, I felt that I had a speed advantage. In the end, it averaged out.
Greg Stamer