i tend to paddle larger boats loaded for all-condition tripping, a lot of it solo. i've put many miles on a couple of dozen popular hull shapes, but most of my experience is the more traditional canadian touring mode in traditional hull shapes. i find i have the best all-day all-condition luck with a long narrow animal-tail at a relatively high cadence.
my stroke is fairly short, typically with an in-water recovery. a relatively short-shaft is a huge asset, i've seen many folks reaching for the sky, reaching for the bow, reaching for the stern with long powerful strokes...the boat spends a lot of time accelerating, correcting, decelerating...in a large hull like say a loaded prospector that's a lot of work...
with a higher-cadence, skinnier-blade there is less power in each stroke, but there are many more strokes...most of the correction is applied during the stroke the upper hand rarely getting higher than the chin or shoulders -- the long blade applies the correction at the places where it's most effective and the power phase in the deeper water below the surface. my back-up paddle is a beaver-tail or something similar that grabs a lot of water quickly and has a longer shaft for standing and effectively grabbing deep-water pockets in shallow or moving areas quickly. it's also quickly tiring.
for the past four or so seasons, my primary tripping paddle is a kettelwell-inspired (i used his template and ray stood there while i carved it) modified ottertail, little larger blade area than the omer stringer style ottertail i used as my primary for the previous two decades. but still a relatively short shaft...
works well for the tripping conditions i encounter, takes a big boat thru wind and waves and is sustainable all-day without fatigue on the short arm muscles and associated joints. it's a terrible style for straight-keeled performance boats, it makes hulls like the wennonah voyager or minn II seem like stubborn but speedy logs...these sorts of boats respond (very) well to a different style and paddle-shape...these may even be a 'better' way of doing it, my style grew out of my experience, pretty much the ontario camp thing that kim talks about. back then, most of us learned solo in 17' grummans backwards and heeled...luckier ones got leaky chestnuts...
