Archive for July, 2005
Separation Anxiety & The Foam Solution
July 12th, 2005 | 
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Lately on the “boards” there has been some discussion about replacing the factory seats in some kayaks with foam seats usually caved out of minicell. Often this discussion is among us NDK owners who seem to be having a variety of problems with the seat separating from the boat or wearing through the hull underneath. Mine is coming loose now for the second time. The seemingly easy answer is to just cut out the seat and replace it with mini-cell foam. But is this the best choice?
The NDK Explorer LV model now ships with a foamseat, not so much because of comfort, but because smaller, lighter paddlers who use the LV need to experiment with the seat position in order to get appropriate fore-aft weight distribution to optimizethe handling characteristics in wind. For this reason,the kayaks come with the foam seat lose (i.e., not glued in).
On other occasions, people have replaced a glass seat with a foam one in order to lower the seat and gain more leg room. However, there are disadvantages to this approach – see below.
Regarding design characteristics for seats, thereare a number of issues that should be factored into a design. These include comfort, safety andefficiency. Efficiency is one that people don’t tendto think much about until they start to paddle longer distances at a faster pace. What you need is a seat design that allows you to maintain an efficient posture and to slide and rotate on the seat. For this reason,a hard, slippery surface is better than a soft surface with a lot of friction (ie. I would go for the glass seat over the foam one any day). Similarly, a higher seat allows for more efficient paddling technique thana lower one. Of course, you need enough leg room, andas you raise the seat you reduce stability. However, lowering a seat will stretch your hamstrings and potentially cause strain in the lower part of your back, which leads to discomfort and inefficiency.
Finally, maintaining an upright posture allows for a much more efficient forward stroke. In several cases, I have foundthat people who feel uncomfortable in the NDK seats (dueto the seat feeling too short) have adopted a sitting position more akin to slouching on a couch than sitting in an upright position suitable for efficient paddling. Often, when posture has been improved seat comfort has not been an issue. Also,as one develops the conditioning that allows good posture tobe maintained, comfort increases dramatically.
So, given that you have enough leg-room, a higher seat, witha slippery surface and enough space side-to-side to allowyou to rotate, is better. Also, a backband that contacts your back/sacrum in the middle only (i.e., doesn’t wrap around)allows for more rotation and better paddling technique. This can be a good feature of replacing the band with a block, butyou have to be careful in this case that you can still lie back on your back deck without the block damaging your back.Not that you would choose to paddle this way, but when you areheading out through surf you might meet a big wave that forces you back like this, and you don’t want a back-injury from it.Alternatively, you could try paddling with no backband at all!This is a good measure of how well conditioned your torso muscles are, and how well you are able to hold a good paddling posture.If you look at kayak racers, they don’t use back-bands at all.
So, beware of the fact that a big, wide, soft, fabric-coveredcouch seat may feel compfy in the store, or even just hangingout on the water. If you intend to paddle far, fast andefficiently you should factor in other considerations.
– Jon
ps. I’m an ex bike racer and this kind of issue comes up in that sport too. People who have never riden a bike love those big fat squishy matress seats, on the grounds that they are more comfortable. However, if you try to ride far on them the inefficiency leads to long-term fatigue and discomfort. If you look what the pros use in the tour de france you’ll never see anything like that,even though these guys cover huge distances day after day.
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Good Information! Thanks to Jon for allowing me to re-post it here.
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Checking In
We just returned from the Door County peninsula in Wisconsin from the aptly named Door County Sea Kayak Symposium. I did get a photo gallery up this morning. Just go here.Thank you to everyone who made the weekend so much fun. Especially all the participants who brought their senses of adventure and humor to our classes. Good job with all the wet exit’s and rescues!! See, we all survived!! I thought we might. .
I hope everyone feels like they got something they could take home. Now as you know, the tough part starts. You just have to hold on to that excitement and get out there and practice everything you have learned! It’s what we all call “Butt in Boat” time. Maybe it’s a good idea to just leave your boat on the car now that you’re home. Let it tempt you and call you out to play! You know you want to!! Don’t hesitate to send me an email if you have a question. It can be pretty hard to remember all that stuff we throw at you over the weekend!
More To Come. . .
Lumberjack Roll
What? Two posts in one day?
Last Saturday Keith Wikle found a big old timber floating in the lake. Of course any big long floating bit of wood demands that a kayaker worth his salt tries to roll with it. Add a bit of editing on my part and you have the lumberjack roll! Click Here!
Welcome to Wisconsin Keith!
Learning To Fly
A fatal attraction is holding me fast,
how Can I escape this irresistible grasp?
- pink floydSea Kayaking is an addiction. How often am I off the water while my mind is lost dancing in the waves?
Ok, so we’re leaving tomorrow at about 4am to head up to Door County for what should be our final Symposium of the year. (That is unless we decide to go to Georgia for the BCU symposium in October.) Door County lays claim to over 300 miles of shoreline and is another mid-west sea kayaking wonderland. However I did notice that the Door County Chamber of Commerce website seems to omit kayaking in favor of Yachts when it comes to on-water recreation. I am afraid many of us sea kayaker types just don’t spread around enough disposable income. What little we have tends to go into replacing worn gear instead of purchasing artistically prepared fish plates. Wait, to be fair, they did include a picture of a recreational kayak in a slideshow. . .
As luck would have it, I’ve been blessed with a serious case of “swimmer’s ear” and only have half my head working. (Probably the reason for the sarcasm above) It’s my own fault for not actually using the big bottle of 50% Alcohol & 50% white vinegar that I keep by the bathroom sink. If you remember to put a few drops of this little mix in your ears after each outing your risk of getting simmer’s ear is much less. I on the other hand often come home cold, wet, tired, and stupid, completely blowing off such mature & responsible actions and instead drop to the floor in a befuddled lump. For FACTS about swimmer’s ear please go to WEBMD’s Topic Overview.
Regardless of my (great) suffering we still need to get packed up and ready for the 6 hour drive to Rowleys Bay. You would think that we would have settled into the routine of packing up the jeep for these extended weekends but it’s actually quite the contrary. Each trip has added at least one more person and caused us to re-invent our packing. Down comes the bar where I could conveniently hang all my gear. The rear seat much come up meaning that my Greenland paddle will either be pressed against the front windsheild or staying at home. We will of course, have no choice but to use our kayaks to hold gear. If like us you sometimes have to load gear in your boats, be sure to check your racks weight limit. Using our factory mounts on the Jeep for instance allows for about 160 lbs. So you can really trust only about 130 lbs or so. When we factor in our infamously heavy Nigel Dennis Explorers (or see; Sea Kayaking UK) we can wipe out about 120 lbs right off. So that means nothing in the boats but clothing. And dainty clothing at that!
I spent Saturday near Milwaukee working with a few folks on offside rolls and supportive bracing skills. My observation has been that the most common flaw in the “offside” roll is the lack of a good hip-snap. You often have to start from scratch and learn it all over on the “off” side. JB and I both tried and suceeded doing a re-entry roll while re-attaching the spray skirt under water before rolling up. This is actually quite easy (at least in calm water) but neither of us had tried it before. The point of this silly manuver is to keep water out of your cockpit and have your skirt on to face the conditions that caused you to have to re-enter and roll in the first place.
On Sunday Mary and I met with friends who are moving to the area and introduced them to our local paddle pond, Devil’s Lake. I have a fantastic video from the day I’ve labeled “The Lumber Jack Roll”, but I have to hold out on that until the roller, or should that be rollee?, sees it and says I can post it. It answers the burning question, “Can you roll a White Water Kayak with a Landscape Timber?”. Now, don’t go trying that at home!
Thanks to KW I have a pretty good grasp of the “Angel” or “Butterfly” roll and now have pulled off 3 very sloppy successes. I also have a few nice bruises for my efforts. Ah, wondering what that is? Well this is one of those fancy traditional rolls that is best performed with a Greenland Paddle although I have seen it done with a big fat whitewater blade as well. Here is a description that was originally posted in the Qajaq USA forum by Brian Nystrom:
To do a butterfly roll to the right side:
- Hold your right arm across your abdomen, with your hand near your left hip.
- Hold the paddle in the center of the loom with your left hand.
- Reach across and place the paddle along the right gunwale, palm down
- Capsize to the right.
- When the boat rolls around and you start to come up, reach up and outward with the paddle as you lay back on the deck and flop your right hand over for balance. It’s sort of like you’re “unfolding” onto the rear deck. You finish laying on the back deck with your arms outstretched on either side of the boat and the paddle parallel to the boat. - Thanks to Michael Daly for creating a great Kayak Rolling Cross Reference! Check that out Here!
The Great thing about kayaking is that you are always learning. Someone new to the sport and just learning a sculling draw is really in the same place as someone else learning a “butterfly roll”. We’re working on different skills but sharing the same process of failure, success, and advancement. This is why many great paddlers will always call themselves “intermediate”. They know that no matter how much they learn there is still a mountain in front of them. This is a very humbling experience. I know whenever I’m feeling a bit cocky, all I need to do is try to pull off a hand-roll. As I sink slowly back to an inverted position and pull my paddle loose from my bungies, I am reminded again that if “they” are intermediates I am certainly still just a beginner.
You Can Put Your Hands Down Now. . .
Just a quick reminder. When sculling for support you want your blade to slide across the surface of the water so it’s important to keep your arms in against your body and LOW. If your outer arm (The one one away from the supporting blade) is too high, you will not get much support because your blade will be angled into the water and not parallel to the surface.
When first trying to scull it’s easy to get caught up in the tension and fear of “falling over”. So we tend to shorten our strokes which by necessity causes us to speed up our strokes, which in turn causes us to work too hard to stay up as well as increases our nervousness. It’s a vicious circle. What you want to do is move your blade slowly and deliberately in WIDE arcs. Then slowly put a bit of weight on the blade and increase your lean only as you feel comfortable to do so. Again, If you keep your arms low, keep the blade parallel to the surface, and you use slow wide strokes you should immediately notice you have much more support with much less work.
Good Luck Out There!
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