All My Windy Days
involve personal estimates of wind speed. The fetch, or distance that the wind is able to travel unobstructed matters a lot. I believe that in my normal small bays, estuarys, and sounds if it is much beyond strong enough to knock the tops off the waves and there is the resulting spray everywhere it is too much. I think this is about 25mph.
Can’t even imagine being out in 70 mph as stated above.
Mark
70mph was scary.
– Last Updated: Mar-01-06 1:17 PM EST –
At least no time for waves to build up on the small lake. We were only about 200 yards from our take out. We just held on to the gunwales & paddles, prayed and waited for the wind to die down.
Fortunately, the strongest winds only lasted about 5 minutes, but it seemed like an eternity.
another variable
for me is air and water temps. Winter no to light wind is nice! Summer water in the 70’s and air in the 90’s let it blow 
My best was 1-2 miles off shore. 20-25 sustained with 30 gusts and 6-8 ft breaking seas white horses on top!! Wow that was fun!!! Then again I was with instructors and wasn’t bright enough to be scared!! We got to do some real rescue practice that day! I had a hell of a day and slept real good that night. Andy Z , Lurker(sorry forgot your real handle) and I did run into some good gusts at Raystown. Stopped us dead in out tracks just before getting back to camp. At flat out paddling we couldn’t make any headway till it backed off. Good thing it was just a gust or two!! Would not want to try that in cold water and air temps.
Choose your poison!
…I mean boat.
I learn it fast when I started in San Francisco Bay: it’s ALWAYS windy!
After a couple of trips on different boats, I quickly realize the wide bathtub with peaked deck gets pushed around a lot more than boats with sleek low deck. So I focus on using only low windage ‘brit style boats, complete with at least a skeg.
With that, I can “enjoy” the omnipresent ~15 mph wind, with occasional gust of 25~35 mph (could be more). There had been time I found myself being blown backward by the gust. But as long as the steady wind doesn’t exceed 15 mph, I can make reasonable head way. Anything beyond that, it’s more survival than anything else.
So, wind tolerance is a function of both skill AND EQUIPMENT. A strong paddler can paddle a bathtub against 35 mph head wind. While a “whimp” like me will only go out at below 15 mph, which by the standard of someone else who’s got a 9’ non-rudder/skeg boat may still think it’s pretty “brave” after all!
Winds
Anything over 20 knots and I won’t go out. I have a rec yak and she can take rough weather but I don’t want to chance it in strong winds.
FishHawk
Yeah if only it had been a tailwind
we’d have smoked that 8 miles, but it was a dead on headwind. I think the waves did a lot of pushing us back too, they were quite steep.
That was just a reminder that the weather controls your plans out there.
Captain Mellow
Light breeze is about it for me wanting to be there. If it’s white capping I’m off the water. Here in the Rockies if it’s winter wind the water is probably solid on top. If it’s summer wind there is probably a thunderstorm brewing. Our mountain storms can be fierce and life-threatening, and the water is usually pretty cold. I paddle to enjoy-not-fight nature.
Taj
long haul
It was blowing maybe 20 mph behind me and was in a hurry that day and did not bother with skirt because no wind at my house but windy on st lawrence river- mile wide. Was havingfun surfing with glider and really leaned to stay perpendicular to wave and was soon swimming. Held unto paddle but boat blew away and was rescued by fd in zodiac. Got pic in paper and felt really dumb. Suppose paddle blows out of your hand? Do not mess with mother nature. Some people quit all outdoor stuff and become tv addicts after one bad experience on water or mt. Please be safe and stay outdoor active for rest of your long happy life!
Call me a skeptic, but…
…when I hear reports of people paddling in really high winds, I have to laugh. I’ve been out in winds of 30 knots - verified by data from a nearby weather buoy - and found it difficult to make much headway (probably less than 1/2 knot). Most books state that an average fit paddler will be stopped dead in the water or going backwards at ~35 knots, which sounds about right.
People seem to take forecasts and reports of high winds as gospel, which they aren’t. Winds measured offshore or well above the water’s surface are typically much higher than a coastal kayaker will actually experience. Localized winds can be much higher or lower than the average for an area. Unless there’s a weather buoy or station at or near your location, you can’t get accurate data.
Winds in the 70 MPH range are nearly impossible to walk against. I’ve experienced that on Mt. Washington and the wind literally lifted us off our feet and slid us backwards (on bare rock) at times. Such winds would surely flatten kayakers.
That was Joe the lurker…
That was fun though wasn’t it Talon. Just about all the way back from the dam we had a headwind. And as you said just a few hundred yards from the put in, the wind stopped us dead in our tracks. I’ll take a headwind any day over a quartering or wind off the beam.
Andy
I like da wind.
– Last Updated: Mar-01-06 10:47 PM EST –
Da wind in ma hare gives me da willies. I feel huge in da wind, like da Statue of Libty. It hits me from da bak and nocks me in da wada if I ain't carefull, dough. Dat is da chalunge of da wind. It is sneeky.
Like da ol' sayin' if all u hav is lamans, make lamanade, I say dat if all u hav is wind, fly da most bigest kite u can buy. Neked too, if u can.
AMEN!
i can’t see many people being able to paddle on all points in winds above 25 knots or so and make any sort of headway over the course of a day. the roughest conditions i’ve paddled in with a load was 25 knots, three foot rollers and foam during a winter front with a new moon. that was one of the few times when i felt as though i weren’t in control. i’m sure plenty of super human kayakers can handle much more than me and my rob roy, though.
I hate wind
but sometimes you just have to deal with it. From my experience, my limit is 30 knots. It is not pleasant to paddle against such high winds. Mostly make VERY slow progress, higher than that is impossible for me to move forward.
AMEN,AGAIN
Ok, you’re a skeptic “LOL”. I believe
the 70mph because my hat strap was strangling me because the wind was blowing it like a sail behind me. The wind was blowing the boat backwards faster than we had been paddling it forwards before the wind picked up. During the strongest winds, we just crouched down as low as we could get and held on for our dear lives. Fortunately, the winds died down before they slammed us into the shore. There were plenty of tree branches down after the storm.
I don’t think anyone said the made fast progress into 30mph winds, just that they were able to make progress. I was only out in those winds for 1.5 to 2 hours at a time, so I obviously didn’t cover too much territory. I guess that a little context is helpful.
Skepticism is healthy.
Happy paddling.
Very true
I very much agree with your comments. Let me add a bit more.
Wind speed(at least in Europe) is typically meassured 10m above ground. However ground may be much higher than sea level even for coastal stations.
For example we have a lighttower placed at a 10 m tall cliff facing Great Belt. The reported windspeeds are meassured at height 10+10 meters.
To scale windspeed from 10 m height to 0 m height, one would normally substract one third.
I’d say 35 knots sounds right as the limit. Last winter a friend and I paddled some 3 km into a 33 knots wind with short wave fetch. We went absurdly slow. Often we were being blown backwards. After +3 hours insanely tough paddling we reached a local rowing club where we were given shelter.
Lessons learned:
GP shines for this kind of paddling. We wouldn’t have had a chance using our euro/wing paddles. Still in that kind of windspeed even my normally low-gear 2.20m GP was much too hard to pull.
Always bring a tent. We based a week long trip on the premise that we always would be able to reach the next kayak club along the coast for shelter. The weather doesn’t always play along.
/Peter
What Others Can Do Does Factor For You.
– Last Updated: Mar-02-06 6:46 AM EST –
(What I meant to say in the heading is that you can't compare yourself to what folks are posting here...)
because there are differences among the individual posters with respect to equipment and skills and endurance.
The way for you to find out is to go out on a small lake in progressively higher wind conditions -- during the summer -- to figure out what you can or can not do. As your skills and endurance increase, you will be able to do more but will bump into the limit of your rec. boat. When you move up to a boat with less windage, at a certain boat you will bump into the limits of your boat, skills and endurance.
You can be in high winds and say you were out there. But this is not to say that you were in control while out there. This situation is the recipe for something bad to happen. If you can figure your own limits and go out within the envelop of those limits, then you are much closer to paddling with good judgement. Good judgement accounts for equipment, skills and endurance vis a vis the conditions of the day.
sing
yep
well said Sing
Mark
Buy an anemomoter and take it out…
with you next time the wind blows. I enjoy measuring the wind and asking people what they think its strength is. “Oh, at least 10-15 knots.” (More like 3-5.) “Those waves were at least 7 feet.” (More like 3-5, with a whole lot of 2’s.) As far as what Sing said, I’ll reduce it a little further. There is a difference between surfing and being surfed.
Dogmaticus
More problems handling
on and off my roof rack than on the water. Sometimes I need to tie my 21" kayak to a tree while getting my gear out of my Jeep. I use a wing paddle and would hate to get hit with side gust of over 45 mph, on my right side (spooned). A really strong tailwind (over 30) can be rough in a rudderless boat & make it want to turn back around. I live in Kansas and some days are just to risky to unload a boat alone.