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Monday, February 27, 2006
Three Ridges, VA backpacking trip
This weekend was a loop hike of the Three Ridges Wilderness area in Virginia. the trip took us up and across the
peaks or ridges of the area, totalling about 1900 ft of climb on day 1 and 1800 ft of climb on day 2. Total horizontal
distance 12.2 miles.
The night found us camped at a nice stream, with a campfire at the AT shelter, then off to our sleeping arangements:
1 tent, 1 hammock, and 1 tarp. Low that night of 21 degrees, with wind gusts. All slept warm. R. used a
truck windshield screen, thermorest camp chair, space blanket and butt pad with a zero degree synthetic bag in the hammock.
I used byt 15 degree Western Mountaineering Apache SMF bag, with tights and fleece pants, thermal top, and down jacket and
beanie under my tarp. Part of the night the wind blew up the valley and directly into the tarp opening.
Day 2's hike out was up a tumbling stream valley - very nice, and a likely future camping spot during the summer.
Thursday, February 23, 2006
Broken paddles and carrying spare paddles
The breakage of an expensive graphite lightweight paddle at a recent practice session generated some discussion cpakayaker
recently ( http://www.cpakayaker.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=2902#2902 for the thread), prompting me to put a few thoughts down on broken paddles and why and how to carry a spare paddle.
One of the issues with any type of cutting edge technology product, such
as graphite/carbon paddles is that the margins of error in the manufacturing process are often not well understood or defined.
And I've never even heard of an engineering design guide standard for paddles.
In the quest for weight savings, we need to be cognizant of what we are
potentially giving up. It's like light beer - it can't be less filling and still taste great. When you buy a very
lightweight paddle you should understand that you are giving up some of the strength that would be in a heavier paddle of
the same material. Over the years I have seen numerous graphite/carbon paddles break - always in the shaft away from
the ferrule. As Woody noted, all of the breaks I have seen have been catastrophic - no warning signs. I
have also seen several wooden paddles of euro and greenland design break. Wood is a material with inherent inconsistancies
in its structure (such as knots and grain) and a well made wood paddle minimizes these inconsistances, but again, just like
a graphite paddle, the closer you push the limits on weight the less margin of safety you have for possible breakage.
I have yet to see a glass paddle break in the shaft. I have seen one very light glass paddle break in the blade when
the extended grip was used and the paddler didn't know how to properly brace. Perhaps backup paddles should be glass.
Last year I experimented with building a number of foam and graphite
paddles. I could come up with very very lightweight paddles, but I pushed the margin too close on them, and they all
(except one so far) have ended up failing - almost always catastrophically. In the case of one paddle, I was surfing
along on a wave, dug down with a stroke, and suddenly realized the lower half of the paddle was missing. Surfing the
remainder of the wave with the short half of a paddle was invigorating! But, as always, I was carrying a spare paddle
and was able to finish the trip using the spare.
I have one wood paddle that I made out of an extremely light piece of
cedar. The paddle is a joy to use, but the lower the density of red cedar the lower the breaking strength. I would
not trust that paddle in surf or rough conditions. It only comes out for calm protected paddles, and as always, I carry
a spare paddle.
How close you cut that margin of safety is a personal decision, but you
need to be cognizant of the consequences, which, in this case, could include the breakage of a paddle at a very awkward or
dangerous moment.
I have mentioned the idea of carrying a spare several times, and it has
been referred to in some of the posts in this thread. My personal rule is to always carry a spare on any kind of trip.
But simply carrying the spare paddle is not enough. You need to be able to get the spare out of the stored location
on your boat while you are on the water, in your cockpit, and by yourself. I look at many of the spare paddle storage
setups on manufactured boats and can not figure out how I would get the spare out while on the water without someone paddling
up to me and doing it for me. Some of these storage positions are too far toward the stern of the kayak to be reached
from the cockpit. Many storage systems are rigged for the paddle blade to be the end of the spare paddle nearest the
kayaker. I have tried to use spare paddles from positions where the blade is closest to the cockpit, and have either
been unable to get the paddle, or had difficulty. This is especially true when the euro paddle is stored so that the
tip of the blade is curving down to the deck and not up away from the deck - there is nothing to grab to get the blade, especially
if you are wearing gloves for cold water.
My strong preference is to carry the spare take apart paddle with the
shaft ends toward the cockpit. I have practiced getting my spare paddle out from this position and can do it easily
from on the water, and from an upside down position to roll up with half a paddle. I suspect that for most people the
best place to store a spare paddle is on the deck IN FRONT of the cockpit with the shaft ends facing the cockpit. This
would eliminate having to turn around to get the paddles - often an area where you can not see what you are doing and are
relying on feel. However, most of us, myself included, carry a bunch of other stuff on our front decks, precluding keeping
the paddle here unless it's a greenland paddle.
 The photo above shows a sea kayak with rear deck rigging that almost
forces you to store your spare with the blades toward the cockpit, and the shaft ends going under the two bungee sections
aft of the rear hatch. People then turn the blades downward so they don't dig into their backs when rolling, making
it harder to recover the spare blades.
This sea kayak is rigged to more easily allow you to store a spare paddle with the shaft ends toward the cockpit.
The blades slide under the set of bungees to the rear of the aft hatch (stern on this kayak is to the right - stern on the
previous photo is to the left).
At this point I get to put in a plug for carrying a greenland type paddle.
The greenland type storm paddle is shorter than the standard greenland paddle, and will fit on most kayak stern decks without
significant overhang of the stern. Carrying a storm paddle as your backup allows you to grab a paddle that is already
assembled and ready to paddle with when you need it. Can you assemble your take apart paddle while bouncing around in
bad conditions? Can you roll up using only half of your take apart paddle? If you know how to roll, you can roll
up with a storm paddle almost as easily as with a full greenland paddle, and we know rolling with the greenland is easier
than the euro.
End of greenland plug.
Spare paddle don't need to be the same model you normally paddle with,
and can definitly be less expensive models. My first spare paddle was a sevlar screw apart kayak/raft paddle - but at
least I had a spare! My second one had a metal shaft and plastic blades - but I had a spare!
Oh yeah, and when was the last time you put together that spare paddle
and actually paddled with it?
Sunday, February 19, 2006
Pool Session photos
A quick selection of photos taken by JP at the pool session last night. See
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
Site Migration - Starting Now
I've run up against the limit of the 10MB of free server space that came with my dsl subscription with Verizon.
I've started to teach myself real HTML coding, and have begun to move portions of this site over to a new site at:
http://welker.atspace.com
The new site has 500 MB of free server space, so if you'll bear with me in the move, the new site will eventually allow
me to post larger and more photos, and include much more information about the topics.
However, until I figure out how to move my blog over there - and make it as easy to upload to as this site, I'll be keeping
the blog at this location.
Sunday, February 5, 2006
Assateague backpacking, cold weather hammock, WM apache bag
Spent the weekend backpacking at Assateague http://www.nps.gov/asis/ Four of us on the trip, two trying minimal gear. I slept in the cold weather hammock and 15 degree bag with fleece
clothing. Low of 43 with 20 knot winds that shifted around and spent the night blowing right through the open ends of
the tarp. I felt like I was sticking my head out of a car moving about 20-30 mph - I woke up with my eyes tearing, but
plenty warm. Very pleased with the WM bag. First time in a compression bag and worked very well on relofting in
about 5 min.
Wednesday, February 1, 2006
More cold weather hammock experiments
Slept out last night in the latest incarnation of the cold weather hammock setup. Worked very well at a windy 38
degrees F. See: .
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Click on the photos below to go to the
web pages related to the images.
| Backpacking and Hammocking Pages |
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| Hammocking at Assateague, photo by Ralph |
| West Wight Potter Sailing Pages |
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| Wight Magic |
| Sea Kayaking and Kayak Sailing Pages |
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| Kayak sailing in Delaware, photo by JPW |
The goal in 2006:
Spend more nights outdoors.
So far:
January 7, 27, 31. 3 nights
February 4, 25
2 nights
March 11, 31 2
nights
April 14, 15, 28, 29 4 nights
May 6, 19, 20 3
nights
June 17
1 night
July 7, 8, 23
3 nights
August 12, 26
2 nights
September 7
1 night
October
November
December
TOTAL 21
nights
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