I like da wind.
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.
(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.
Wind threshold
see this link:
http://keithwikle.com/article/34/crazy-for-you-but-not-that-crazy
Apologies to anyone who already read this.
as a beginner
its great to push your envelope. Just remember one basic truth…a wind that blows towards the shore is definitely safer than a wind blowing away from the shore.
Agree w/ 35 mph limit
I know there are paddlers out there that could have made progress against these wind gusts, which we verified at 34 to 38 mph w/and anemetor (sp?) when we got to shore, but neither I nor the person next to me could. He is a very strong paddler, and while I am not as strong I was in what turned out to be a bodacious little boat at fighting its way into the wind (my Vela). Both of us realized about the same time that we were getting tired of reading the same darned sign on the buoy that seemed to be following us relentlessly…
We went backwards quite quickly once we ceded the fight though.
That actually was higher wind than we had anticipated. We would not have planned to do that. For normal paddling, when I do a better job of gauging the weather report etc., anything above 20 is a reason to seek a sheltered route. I can and have made progress into headwinds up to 30 mph verified, but it just gets to where it isn’t much fun. After a while the paddling experience is more about being tired than enjoying the passage of time on the water.
As above though, it is very nice to be heading downwind on that.
Dog…
You are so right. In my experience, people frequently overestimate wave height and wind mph. Maybe some paddlers do handle 35+ mph just fine, but frankly, I’d like to see some video of that.
SP
Boat and Boater’s Skills
If you really want to go out on breezy days you might consider a boat designed for it. Longer and leaner and lower volume with a skeg or rudder. Lower volume really helps in the wind.
I really don't like to hear 20 mph on the weather report. My buddies and I have been known to go out in stronger wind. We went WITH the wind and had someone pick us up and drive us home. The surfing was great.
(I always recommend demoing boats on windy days.)