I think Laird and Dave uses about 14deg.. I think the more angle may give more reach at the start of the stroke..and more power at the end of the stroke.

I think the angle has something to do with how it releases from the water at the end of the stroke.

I have also noticed a lot of guys flipping their paddles to slide the face of the blade rather than the back..and it would also give better clearance.

We need Blane to chime in and make a comment.

I'm happy with the angle on my Kialoa's... whatever they are..

DJ

Hi guys, I think that for flatwater paddling, open ocean paddling blades with over 10 degrees of angle are fine. What the optimum angle is at this stage who knows.

I am going to argue that it there is a fair bit of misleading info about paddle angles and the reasoning behind the designs, especially to do with wave riding.

As far as I can feel, the biggest miss-info is that we need paddle angle to keep the water when paddling from pulling the board down and that this will stop you from planing, well this might be true currently for canoe paddling but it is not happening to me when I paddle my SUPA boards.

I usually cruise out the back using lazy chicken winging strokes, not expending too much energy. That is until a set appears and depending on whether it is trying to claim me or I am trying to claim it determines my fast stroke style. What we have to remember is that nothing is set in concrete, SUPA paddling is still that new.

What I am arguing and looking at is wave riding specifically, it is just a useless movement to flip your paddle over to get it to trim better. It slows down your reaction time for wave moves, you actually have to think about turning the blade over to the correct way to use the paddle.

My current blade is a low area, mid aspect blade of around 95sq inches. The blade is flat, no dihedral, no recurve thru the blade length, with the mid aspect planshape. The mid aspect planform hurts a bit more to get going ( you can feel that there is more pressure on the blade) than a higher aspect blade. The only thing that is miss is not having blade recurve as I feel this allows the blade to enter the water much faster and easier than with out recurve, also the blade does not deliver quite as much punch at the end of the stroke when I rotate it out, is this a bad option? The blade still looks like it is in a vertical position when it rotates out to me , but then I am doing shorter wave style high rotation paddle strokes even when cruising back out the stroke is short, mainly because waveboards with their shorter length and increased rocker do not have as much glide as a pure paddle board so the stroke does not need to be as long.

Anyone else got any opions?

Rod

This is an interesting idea.

DJ

That looks pretty cool, i wonder if it works as good as it looks.

After reading about this paddle flipping business I couldn't resist trying it. You know what!
I liked it.