Some mostly very excellent replies already, but I know you are angling
for an essay from me (I could just e-mail it I suppose...).

I can't recall seeing any wrong answers in there, basically smaller
paddles will slip at a much lower "pull" then large blades. If the
paddle slips in the water, you will be pulling it towards you rather
than you past it, therefore a bigger blade is going to get you moving
faster.

This slippage does however form a sort of safety valve. If you are sea
paddling all day you don't want a paddle that can absorb a huge amount
of power each stroke because it will tire you quickly, and you are
probably right about the injury thing - overworking could leave you
vulnerable to muscle injury. That's why Peter uses Archipelagos and I
use Kinetic touring blades on the sea, but both carry "bigger brother"
blades both as spares and as alternatives in case of waking up and
finding 2' of surf dumping on the launch spot or something A lot of
people just use Nordkapps but they always look more shattered after a
long day! I have tried my Kinetic XTis back to back with the touring
version and they do put more strain on even over a short distance.

But I know you are mostly a river runner!

In river running terms a bigger blade makes sense because when you need
a lot of power, you usually need it very quickly. But some blades out
there designed for slalom and/or white water racing really are a bit
more powerful than you would normally need. To be honest the Kinetic XTi
is probably more powerful than I really need, but I have the shoulders
to cope and my river technique involves a lot of drifting when possible.
Playboating blades are a bit of a mixed bag. Many really are incredibly
powerful, some powerful on the back as well as the face - the reason
being that it takes quite a lot of power to lift half of the boat and
paddler out of the water as so many moves require. Lendal are doing a
blade called the mystik which is designed for playboating/surf, and
which they indicate is probably too small for river running - but myself
and Mark W are experimenting with using these as river blades (in the
lightweight carbon composite construction), and whilst it's been fairly
crappy and dry until recently I have been reasonably impressed with them
so far (mine are on a fixed cranked shaft and are lighter than most
other manufacturers lightweights).

Now for the complex part - why some blades or more efficient or more
effective than others and how size isn't everything!
Your regular symmetric blade works by drag alone, but some of the water
spills around the edges and forms eddies or vortices. These vortices
required energy to start and the robbed it from what you exerted on the
paddle, so a blade that is designed to work in a way that creates less
eddies can turn more of your input power into moving forward. This
doesn't mean that an efficient blade is more tiring - you are getting
more forwards motion out of the same input. Some ways of making blades
more efficient include altering the edge that enters the water first
(make them asymmetric) changing the curvature of the face and the chord
of the foil section. I guess the ultimate expression of this would be
wing paddles although these require a quite different style of paddling
to make the most of them.

Someone suggested that your build is a factor - I would agree! And I
would have to say that you are a fairly average build (although probably
more powerful than average) so a mid sized paddle (standard werners,
mystik, etc.) would probably suit you well but you could probably use a
larger blade like a kinetic XTi or something without any problems.
Basically just a new regular blade will probably be perfect for you!

Here is a test I devised whilst struggling to steer my playboat
successfully down the Etive using my 4 year old (at the time) werners
which I still use on rocky runs like that. Paddle along and try and
sweep the bow up on the move - not like a cartwheel, just a few inches
like boofing a drop or something. Then swap paddles with someone with
new blades (or the ones you've got on demo) and try the same thing
again. If you find that the bow lifts a lot further with the new
paddles, you probably need new ones! I did this after a really
frustrating day when I'd buried the bow on every little drop of 4" or
more and failed to dodge around loads of rocks and stuff. My bow hardly
lifted at all with my werners, but with Jens new but otherwise identical
paddle I was able to lift it 6" with hardly any effort. I then went one
stage further and tried to flatwheel, not a problem with my paddle as it
was impossible to throw the bow down properly, but with Jens I was able
to smash my bow right down onto the riverbed as I usually do with my
kinetics. At this point myself and Neil had old werners that had started
out as 198's - mine measured 194 and his were 190 (or less). We had just
been using them and hadn't really noticed the performance drop off (just
thought we were paddling worse than normal) until we tried new paddles
back to back - the difference really is astonishing!

People have mentioned stroke rate and hinted at the importance of
inertia through the air, or lack of it. I think Roo will have decided on
his ideal shaft length by now based on the ratio of playing to river
running that he does (is sprinting more important than momentum?) so I
would just like to add that in my opinion lightweight paddles are far
superior because they travel through the air more easily which allows
higher stroke rates and more importantly makes it easier to vary stroke
rate and of course absorbs less of your energy over the length of the
paddling day. Some people find them hard to get the hang of because the
lack of inertia feels different, but once you get the hang of them it is
impossible to go back to normal weight paddles (Unfortunately my travel
paddles are kinetic splits so I have to from time to time!).

As for your particular situation, I'm guessing you have plenty of sea
paddling available where you live now - I reckon you should consider a
set up like Marks - 4-way paddlok split carbon composite Mystik paddles
with a short HPS shaft for river running and a longer G1F shaft
(possibly cranked) for sea paddling. Of course you could add bigger or
smaller blades to that setup at a later date if required. Lendal do have
a distributor in NZ so you should be able to get hold of them.

So, anything I've left unclear? I can write another essay tomorrow if
you want

JIM

roo wrote:

Hi All

I did a quick archive search but found nothing too useful. If anyone
could point me in the right direction that would be great.....

I've been getting a lot of comments recently about the size of my
paddle blades. They've been ground down considerably since 1998 and
instead of a symmetric blade shape they are now very similar to a
shrunk kinetic shape.

(This is only because I use my paddles the same way round all the
time. They were any orientation paddles, but luckily I kept using
them the same way and avoided ending up with very expensive cocktail
sticks!)

So enlighten me to the pros and cons of different blade sizes.....

I assume it's a relative assessment, but...

Large blades provide more power, but give a higher chance of injury?

Small blades allow/require a higher stroke rate for equivalent large
blade propulsion?

Is the size irrelevant, because all that is required is enough
friction to plant the blade and pull yourself past the shaft?

Should I buy some new paddles with normal sized blades?

I await your informed replies.
hf
roo