"Jaakko" wrote in message
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stuff deleted

A hint: watch your kayak´s bow. As long as it stays steady, you are doing
fine. If you paddle too fast for your ability or pull too long strokes,
your bow starts going either up and down or moving sideways. Then it is
time to slow down/shorten the pull.

Jaakko

o~
(____/____)
/

Since the bow of my kayak is curved rather strongly (I guess to allow it to
go over waves), I get a nice bow wave appearing once I get to about 4 mph.
As I go faster, the wave gets bigger. The bow does go up on the wave as I
go faster, but what I find most noticeable is the size of the wave. Lately,
I've been using that as the indicator of speed and every time the wave
starts going down from its "usual" height, I know I'm slacking off.