Personally I'm thinking about 8-10" overhead for flat water and 6-8" overhead for the surf.

DJ

It depends on your board & style.

A rule of thumb is: if you are on a board where you take off with parallel feet, DJ suggestion is sound. If you take off in fencing / surf stance, you will love a paddle your height.

But the real issues is the radius of your turns. The shorter you want to turn, the shorter your paddle must be, it can be down to -4" for performance in hollow waves.

colas said..

It depends on your board & style.

A rule of thumb is: if you are on a board where you take off with parallel feet, DJ suggestion is sound. If you take off in fencing / surf stance, you will love a paddle your height.

But the real issues is the radius of your turns. The shorter you want to turn, the shorter your paddle must be, it can be down to -4" for performance in hollow waves.

Thanks heaps for the advice! Cant beat hands down experience!

Some good advice here from both ends of the spectrum... you definitely don't want it too long as it will make paddling more strenuous on your body, but just how short you decide to go will depend on what performance level you want to take your surfing too, what board you're using, your weight and how the board sits in the water and how far you're planning to paddle to get to waves (and how comfortable you want to be if its a long way).

One of the things a lot of people don't take into account (or often don't even mention) when comparing paddle lengths is how high the board sits out of the water...just looking at the physics, If you're a medium weight on a big 5-6" thick all around board, your feet could be 3-4" above the waterline, whilst someone of the same weight/height pushing the performance (and floatation) limit of a short sup might have their feet 1-2" below the waterline.... So already that's a massive 5" difference between the position of top hand (where the power is applied to the paddle) and the water before taking into account any other factors.

You don't want to cut it too far (because extending a paddle is a lot harder than cutting it down) so maybe start with DJ's suggestion of 6-8" but instead of gluing with epoxy which can be hard to get off, try either taping with electrical tape, or if that's doesn't hold enough for you, use some hot glue (you can get a cheap craft heat glue gun from woollies for about $10 if you don't want anything more fancy) which you can then heat up with a hairdryer to get the handle off. That way you shouldn't have too much trouble cutting it down bit by bit until it feels comfortable.

My surf paddle is currently about 1-2" overhead (I think), but that's just personal preference so play around until you find what works, or if your surfing with other guys shorter than you, ask to borrow theirs to see how it feels?

For surfing my paddle is the same height as me.

Technique, experience and conditions all play a part.

I started with the point where paddle blade expands at eye level. That seemed fine for starters. Then after surfing for a while the paddle started to feel long! Wonder why? Merimbula last year had a couple of the guys there recommending shortening by 4 - 6 inches. Tried it , cut my old paddle down and loved it.

May even try to get shorter again.

So, comes back to experience and technique. Suggest starting longer then cutting down a couple of inches at a time. Best of all if you can demo or use an adjustable paddle. You don't want to go too short too quickly as you can put stress on your lower back or other areas.

There's a pretty good paddle sizing chart on the quickblade web site.

colas said..

Kami said..
Since i watch the Noah' vid surfing with a long paddle and a board 24 wide, i keep an eye on the relation between the width of the board

The jury is still out, but it also seems that for very narrow boards, the weight of the paddle becomes more and more important. Lighter paddles seems helping a lot for the quicker body adjustments needed for these boards, although you will lose some "static" balance (using the paddle as a balance pole). I already have my new light paddle (349 g... incredible) waiting for my narrower board this week to try (2" less width on my small wave 6'8" board)

I d'ont use a paddle as balance pole I better feel my balance digging my paddle in the water closest to me as i can.
About paddle cut under my height, i went back to my first paddle which is a Hobbie because i got flex in the shaft and some (few) buoyancy in the paddle itself . This paddle buoyancy is helpful a bit during waiting , paddle dig in water...

Dynymor said..

Thanks Kami, I have already noticed how much harder my legs have to work on the lower volume board. Definitely agree I need to be in a lower stance when the wave comes- shorter paddle will help.
Cheers

Cheers Dynymor, before any session i always warm up and stretch until i get my hand palm flat to ground with both legs extended.
Doing this body stretch you will not only have a lower stance to take off but also more control on your bottom turn and the whole wave because your body flexed on back foot is already on the tail pad