Pssssah. Keep the double blades where they belong, paddling across the River Styx transporting hapless souls to heck.
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Happy Mathematics Day! ❌📐♾️
Pssssah. Keep the double blades where they belong, paddling across the River Styx transporting hapless souls to heck.
That would be Wikad Pissah
Come on down. We've got lots of room. And an ocean to expand your paddling repertoire.
After some time at the mouth of the Kennebec you'll
a double blade
What's unfortunate is your misinterpretation of my post and your unnecessarily thin skin. Stick around and take what you want, if anything, from this forum. Almost everyone here freely gives of their knowledge, experience and opinions -- which often diverge and differ from one another.
Actually, none of what I wrote was intended to give you advice or critique you. The only thing I know about you is what you wrote about yourself. You are the one who stated that you are a "novice", an "amateur" with "zero" formal canoe training and "zero" knowledge and experience with kayaks.
Given your own description of yourself, I simply began by stating that your reaction to a double paddle is commonplace. The rest was a recitation of some of my personal experience and some historical facts.
I'll now give some advice: Get out on the water and paddle your canoe. Use your double blade. Use your single blade. Seek out advice and instruction as to how to use both more effectively. Eventually, try different styles and lengths of paddles. Try different canoes. Try kayaks. Practice, practice, practice. Then, after a few years, feel free to offer your experience and opinions to novices and amateurs who show up on paddling forums. And stick around.
Whence this polemic?
As one whose posting and paddling venues overlap with yours, I don't know what the heck you're talking about or whom you're describing. Nor do I recognize the paddling world you seem to assume.
In the flatwater paddling world I see in the USA, with the exception of a few places touching Canada -- namely, Maine, the Adirondacks and the Boundary Waters -- double bladers, mostly in kayaks, outnumber single bladers probably 40 to 1. The ratio in whitewater is even more lopsided. Poling a canoe is a tiny niche, and every canoe poler I know is also a canoe paddler, some with single blades, some with doubles and some with both.
Most highly experienced single blade canoeists I've known in my life also have owned or paddled kayaks. Actually, the vast majority of those single bladers are now dead -- their numbers and skills unreplaced. What would any of them be "defensive" about or "scornful" of?
Where are these single blade "purists" who "demean" and "devalue" other boaters, who "look down their nose", and who act "unwelcome" towards anyone other than their (almost extinct) single blade brethren? Expressing a preference for decked canoes does not devalue open canoes. Pointing out the benefits of carbon paddles does not demean wooden paddles. Voicing a love for wood-canvas canoes is not looking down one's nose at composite canoes. And expressing a preference for, or describing the benefits of, one type of paddle is not a claim that users of other types of paddles are clueless. It's all just a simple exchange.
And you're not the only who is welcoming of paddlers in different crafts -- not that you intended to say that.
In fact, a single blading open canoeist has almost no choice this century but to paddle with double bladers if he or she wants aqueous company. You, of all people, should know that . . . as a prolifically itinerant 21st century kayaker.
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Settle down kids, or you're gonna get a paddlin'!
Pssssah. Keep the double blades where they belong, paddling across the River Styx transporting hapless souls to heck.
Canadians can be so much more pithy than Americans.
And your hypothesis about Charon may be correct.
Can't you tell the paddling season is winding down? And please, don't tell me it's just migrating southwards! Anyway, thanks for the river Styx/ Charon references. When i googled "Images" I got some amazing pictures of Charon's paddles. I saw skinny singles, greenland doubles, several New England poles, a surprising number of SUP's, and one lonely Ray Kettlewell with the black cormorant dragon-thingy printed on the blade.
Interesting find Glenn! I had to dig deep into my ancient crumbling set of Encyclopedia Brittanica that some Yankie salesman convinced my parents to buy with half of their life savings in order to keep me from growing up stupid. Imagine my chagrin when I found the image below of Charon, single blading in heck.
However, that pic sort of reminds me of meself in my prime, single stroking along, bare chest thrumming with muscles, with an equally bare chested maiden in my bow. A daily event, in the summer months. Alas, as the ravages of time have moved my pectorals into my gut, creating a Homer Simpson-esque physique, I may have to switch to the crater called a kayak, just so said gut can have a special hole to fit into, and then be forever hidden away by the pretentious spray skirt, thus projecting the illusion of fitness and virility, whilst hiding the prolonged effects of American beer and Spam.
Tis better to single blade in heck, than double blade in Alberta!
However, that pic sort of reminds me of meself in my prime, single stroking along, bare chest thrumming with muscles, with an equally bare chested maiden in my bow. A daily event, in the summer months. Alas, as the ravages of time have moved my pectorals into my gut, creating a Homer Simpson-esque physique, I may have to switch to the crater called a kayak, just so said gut can have a special hole to fit into, and then be forever hidden away by the pretentious spray skirt, thus projecting the illusion of fitness and virility, whilst hiding the prolonged effects of American beer and Spam.
Tis better to single blade in heck, than double blade in Alberta!
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Reading this thread reminds me of some of our family gatherings only the discussion wasn't single blade vs double blade, it was an uncle swearing GM made the best cars, the other uncle saying Fords were the best, my Dad saying whomever gave him the best deal (he drove 30,000 + miles a yr.). I just smiled and offered to run stoplights with my 'Cuda against whatever they owned. Chrysler products ruled. So...the point being, paddle in whatever boat that makes you content using whatever manual propulsion you prefer. Why should your personal preference bother anybody else
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LOL...its called a bat!
That bat sure has a long-shafted neck. Maybe it's a Greenland bat.
We're both wrong though lots of people call them bat paddles.. I have two.. I used to have a lot as Algonquin Outfitters dumped a pile at Collinsville Canoe every fall and those of us that worked the sale got one each
Its a Canada Goose
http://www.network54.com/Forum/352882/thread/1236745968/Kettlewell+paddles
Its a Canada Goose
http://www.network54.com/Forum/352882/thread/1236745968/Kettlewell+paddles
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Canada Goose make more sense than a bat... So now we know, I always wonder what it really was, thank you YC. I heard good things about these paddles, I never tried one or saw one in the flesh are they that great?
the best
So...the point being, paddle in whatever boat that makes you content using whatever manual propulsion you prefer. Why should your personal preference bother anybody else
Among serious paddlers having serious discussions, the point is not some abstract question of what's "best". Nor should any serious person be bothered by someone else's choice of a car, boat or paddle.
However, no serious person should be oblivious to or ignore facts. It is a FACT that my van can carry more lumber than my Mustang. It is a FACT that my Mustang will beat my van in a drag race.
Similarly, it is a FACT that a novice can learn to paddle straight with a double blade paddle much, much faster and easier than with a single blade paddle. I can put virtually any novice senior citizen in a rec kayak and teach them how to paddle straight and turn with a double paddle within 30 minutes. In contrast, it took me 32 years (from age 8 to 40) before I learned how to do a proper single-sided correction stroke. In fact, I became a certified class 4 whitewater paddler before I had learned how to do an efficient flat water forward correction stroke. All during those 32 years I thought I was doing efficient forward (J-ugh!) strokes, but I wasn't. I was ignorant and unschooled and a klutz.
It is a FACT that you can roll a canoe or kayak in far more ways with a double paddle than a single paddle.
It is a FACT that you can more easily paddle some tight, twisty, overhung streams with a single paddle than a double.
It is a FACT that you can power directly into the wind or directly up a current more effectively with a double blade than a single.
It is a FACT that you must learn and employ a more sophisticated arsenal of strokes as single-blader to be equal in effectiveness as double-blader. It's more complicated and harder to learn for a single-blader. For example, you don't really need to employ cross-hull strokes to go forward, backward and turn with efficiency and precision in white water or flat water with a double paddle, but you do need to employ cross-hull strokes to accomplish equivalent efficiency and precision with a single paddle.
It is a FACT that you will win more flat water races with a squashed tulip blade shape paddle than a beaver tail paddle.
It is a FACT that you will be more successful in padding class 4 whitewater paddle with a rectangular shaped paddle blade than with a quill shaped blade.
And it is a FACT that some people will resent being accused of demeaning, debasing or scorning a paddle, or a paddler, by simply stating these FACTS in the context of trying to explain their personal experience or in trying to give advice.
I could rant on about similar FACTS relating to canoe hull shapes, construction materials and propulsion techniques, but I think I've made my point.
There are also terminological issues. If you are standing in a kayak or on a raft and propelling it with a 12 foot long stick, are you kayaking or rafting? You can differ, but I choose to call that activity poling. If you lay on your stomach on top of your canoe thwarts and propel it forward with your hands doggy paddling in the water, you are in a canoe but are you canoeing? To me, that activity is more akin to swimming. Whether a given paddle craft is a canoe or kayak is often an interesting and unresolvable debate, but to me (and the USCA) there should be terminological agreement on the propulsion activity: using a double blade for propulsion is kayaking and using a single blade blade is canoeing.
It is a historical FACT, however, that terminology has varied throughout history. Both double blades and single blades have been used by native cultures for centuries, and by European and North American recreational paddlers since the 19th century (doubles more so in the US than Canada). The words "canoe" and "kayak" have used inconsistently in various places.
Finally, we can move from facts to subjective opinions, which is what most things in life, including paddling, are about. My opinion is that I get far more aesthetic, physical and psychological motion pleasure from using a single blade than a double blade. I formed that opinion based on 64 years of owning and using dozens of canoes and kayaks with all sorts of paddles. I reserve the right to express that opinion in appropriate contexts. And I respect anyone who wants to voice a different subjective opinion. But I also reserve the right to comment when someone appears to be ignorant of, or states something contrary to, FACT.
In spite of some of the hurt feelings expressed in this thread__and hurt feelings are unfortunate, but difficult to pre-empt__the discussion contains some interesting dichotomies: amateur/expert, newbie/veteran, debating/peacemaking, opinion/fact, (subjective/objective truth), old/new, and self-taught/taught by others. Glenn, your ideas and experience are valued by paddlers across North America, and I thank you for caring enough to share them. I understand how frustrating it can be when we seem to confuse fact and opinion. Worse than that, we're even becoming confused enough to equate facts (history) with opinions, oftentimes resorting to the cheerful "truth" that one person's opinions are as valid as another's. Actually, no. Two plus two do not equal 5, even if it hurts my feelings and my pride (danged pride!) to be told so. There really is an objective reality out there in spite of the fuzzy democratic notion that "your truth and my truth are equal, just different". Poppycock! (borrowed anachronism of British vintage) Glenn, your mentioning of having not really learned a proper forward corrective flatwater stroke for 32 years made me smile. Isn't that often the curse of the self-taught male paddler? Many here are guilty on both counts, being self-taught and male. The eternal debates about hull design and which boat to buy are similar to this paddle discussion. Two easy conclusions: 1) "It's just personal preference". 2) "Paddle as many different boats as possible before you purchase". Both conclusions seem to make sense, in a homegrown, organic, feelgood sort of way. Lately, however, and surely this is a function of advancing age (dammit!) I've become skeptical of these "truths". I'm realizing that if a boat's paddling characteristics "suit my style" it's probably because the boat is really just a slightly modified version of what I've already been comfortable paddling in my comfy, personal, fossilized "style". Nowadays, I'm coming to distrust my first paddling impressions of new boats. Perhaps the unease experienced in one's first paddles in new hulls is a sure sign that the boat demands paddling technique that I haven't yet learned, much less mastered. My sense that this might be true is that most new (used) boats that I've purchased over the years revealed their qualities to me slowly over time and in a variety of environments. I'm rambling here (my "style", not for everyone!), so I'll end with a direct plea: If you've run off, Mars, come back to the table! I like a forum where both venerable paddling elders and impetuous young upstarts participate. Come back to the table. It's time for coffee and liqueurs!
This whole thread I think has missed out from the very beginning? Anybody read Canoeing with the Cree? It's a great read from a time long past where I'm pretty sure the single or double bladed paddles of today have very little resemblance to what Eric was using in 1930. But him being a Minnesota boy I still respect his opinion!
Well....yeah..........they do. But we keep it to ourselves.
I mean, it's unavoidable - with y'all sitting so close to the water, y'know.I was re-reading the OP's quote of Eric S, and thinking....a lot of what is written about paddling is dated due to advances of paddle design and new understanding of the craft. I think this is one case in point.
BTW - my earlier post here about getting back into paddling after my injury, with the use of a double........That actually turned out to be a surprise. I had more trouble with handling the double with my injured hand than when using the single bent shaft. I found myself paddling the Chesapeak (kayak/decked canoe/whatever) with the single blade for the bulk of the experiment. Good thing I can get away with paddling on one side.
Haven't used a double-blade yet, but I just bought one on sale to try out next season, so I won't have an opinion about it until then.
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