Many years ago, and we're probably talking the late 1970's, I made a long skinny paddle just to try it out. This is nothing like the short skinny paddles that a lot of people are using today - my opinion of these is that they are extremely inefficient and slip through the water somewhat.

A few years ago I was talking to an Olympic paddling coach and he said that paddling a kayak is like having a lot of sticks set in concrete blocks on the bottom of the seabed, and pulling yourself past them. Which when your paddle is alongside your kayak in an upright position, this is exactly what you are doing - pulling yourself past it, then picking it up and putting it in the other side and pulling yourself past it again. The absolutely last thing you want that paddle to be doing is slipping backwards through the water. So the blade needs to be of sufficient area not to slip. I don't believe the current 'skinny sticks' are anywhere near big enough.

The area of each of my blades is approx 100 square inches (or 700 square cms). 12 cm by 60 cm, or 4.7 inches by 23.6 inches.

Not having one of these in the USA I recently went to the trouble of making one, as detailed below. First I needed a shaft in a hurry. In Tasmania I just buy a length of 1 ¹/₈ inch aluminium tube, but in New Hampshire I drove to the nearest kayak shop and bought their cheapest paddle ($60). It had plastic blades which I immediately cut off, and drilled out the aluminium shafts where they had been. Then to the nearest glass shop and got two pieces of quarter inch glass, 6 inches by 24 inches. I put a few coats of wax on one side of these. I found an old curtain rod (maple?) and shaped two pieces of that to use. I used the glass to lay up the fibreglass blades, left them in the sun to hurry the curing, then cut them to shape. When the blades were finished they were glued into the shafts using super strength waterproof epoxy glue.

A piece of the curtain rod.

Shaped round to fit in the shaft, and flat where the blade will be laid up.

And tapered.

Waxing the glass to help stop the fibreglass sticking to it.

Two layers of Chopped Strand Mat (CSM) to start with.

Then the shaped pieces of wood down the centre, extra piece of reinforcing near the shaft.

Extra reinforcing at the tip to reduce damage when hitting rocks etc.

Single layer over the top.

Cut to shape and glued into the shafts.

The plastic blades I cut off.

A slightly longer paddle, but the shaft is a standard length - the yellow paddle is a 230 cm paddle.
As near as I can measure it (drawing pencil grid lines) the yellow blade has an area of approx 82 square inches, as against 100 square inches of mine.

I also don't have much time for the slightly oval shaped hand grips on most paddles these days. When I'm upside down in the middle of the night when you can't see the paddle, I like a grip that you instantly know the orientation of the paddle blades. My usual method of achieving this is to glue a piece of cord along the top of the shaft, and then put heat shrink plastic over it. This makes a very obvious ridge. I couldn't find any heat shrink for paddles in the USA so had to get Andrew, a good friend of mine in Australia, to post some over to New Hampshire.

Glued on with waterproof epoxy.

Each side filled in with Sikaflex 291 (the ultimate marine sealant).

Heat shrink at each end.

Then full length piece fitted.

Now I'm happy to go paddling.

Laurie Ford - August, 2008.