Re: paddle size

Thanks Fellas. Some good info shared. I've cut down one of my sea kayak touring paddles and will wait until a well priced split shaft , wing paddle hits ebay.
Cheers.

Good point, Stuart. When I use a FEnn 1, the total paddle length is about 2-3 cm longer than when I use a blade like an Epic mid. Interestingly, I demo'd a Bracsa 8 a year ago and had to use a 224 or more (can't remember) just to be able to fit my hands on the shaft at their normal width. Those blades are very long.

Lewis Laughlin did use a 207 mid wing Epic in San Francisco, but I noticed in the Molokai pictures from this year he was using a Jantex paddle. It was hard to tell what length it was, as it looked like a one piece paddle. Perhaps someone can clarify.

I can confirm that Lewis uses (and used at Molokai) a "2.15 adjustable Jantex mid-plus" to quote him exactly.

Thanks Rob. Did Lewis say what length he adjusted it to?

Another factor to take into account is the blade length / shape. Seems to me that your hands need to be in the same place relative to the water - so with a longer blade, the paddle length will be a bit longer. (not sure if I explained that properly).

For example a parallel blade like a Lettman 1 is much longer than an equal sized teardrop paddle like a Braca IV. To keep you hands in the same place and bury the whole blade, the Lettman would have to be longer by about 3cm.

I know that the parallel blades have become unfashionable recently but there are a lot of people using them as they have been shown to be more predictable in rough water.

This has been my experience as well. When using a paddle that had smaller blades than my Epic mid (Onno small endurance 18"x6"), I naturally wanted the smaller bladed paddle to be shorter.

Thanks Rob. Did Lewis say what length he adjusted it to?

Not explicitly - so I infer that he used it set to 2.15.

Has anyone ever heard of cutting and shortening a one piece paddle? We have an epic midwing 220cm and would like to shorten it by about 5 or so cm. I was thinking that maybe we could have a ferrel installed in the center to make it a 2 piece adjustable. Any thoughts if this is possible?

very easily done