Not much paddling during the winter?

December:
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January:
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Not as exciting, but a few pics from a paddle yesterday on an unseasonably warm (65F) day in Western Oregon. Drove to the coast and paddled Siltcoos Lake, one of several very large freshwater lakes just a mile (sometimes less) from the ocean, each with lots of narrow arms and fingers to explore...

Siltcoos is unusual in that you can also paddle down a narrow, winding river that connects the lake to the ocean. Pretty cool to see the surrounding ecosystem change from mature forest to dunes as you go. (Last three pics are from other paddles there, hence the different kayaks.)

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Do you get any tidal activity on Siltcoos?
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The water level changes a foot or two with the tide in the last mile before the beach, but there's very little current. Not sure why? Maybe because it's a pretty narrow inlet at the beach? You can still get down it at low tide, just have to pick your deeper channels carefully.

What's always interesting is how the last several hundred yards (where the river flows through the dunes and beach) changes dramatically with every visit.

I've never actually paddled out into the ocean (though you could)...mainly because the breakers are often pretty big, and I'm usually in "leisure mode" (without a skirt or drysuit or PFD) when paddling the river. :)
 
Did my usual thing yesterday of joining the Jericho Beach Kayak Centre for the first half of their Winter Paddle. When they reached the turn-around point near the first nav marker on Spanish Banks, I carried on to Wreck Beach. There were folks taking advantage of the warm weather to tan fully nude. I did not join them - I don't have even a regular beach body, let alone a Wreck Beach body! After a water and snack break, I pulled the folding WindPaddle Sail out of my kayak's back hatch, and sailed back to Jericho. The wind was light, so I moved at a slow and stately pace, but it was so warm and lovely on the water, that was fine. Briefly saw dolphins shortly before landing.
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kayakwriter, do you just hold your WindPaddle sail, attach it to deck cleats? The Mariner has two cleats just ahead of the cockpit and I imagined hooking the two (connected) lines over the cleat. It would allow "hands-free" but still be a "quick release" by grabbing the line and lifting it back/over the cleat.

I only tried my WindPaddle once, and it was a debacle because the wind kept changing direction. But I could imagine that with a steady breeze in the direction you want to go, it would be an alternative propulsion method.
 
cougarmeat said:
kayakwriter, do you just hold your WindPaddle sail, attach it to deck cleats? The Mariner has two cleats just ahead of the cockpit and I imagined hooking the two (connected) lines over the cleat. It would allow "hands-free" but still be a "quick release" by grabbing the line and lifting it back/over the cleat.

I only tried my WindPaddle once, and it was a debacle because the wind kept changing direction. But I could imagine that with a steady breeze in the direction you want to go, it would be an alternative propulsion method.
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So as many on WCP know, I'm a huge fan of kayak sails, and have a range, including a Pacific Action Sail, Spirit Sails, and a Falcon Sail. The WindPaddle (sadly no longer made) is the most downwind-specific of them all. But the pros to it are you don't need any permanent hardware on the boat for it - it clips on to front deck lines. And the whole works fold up taco-style to stow below decks when not needed. So it's great for borrowed/rented boats, and for my Etain - a skeg boat I wouldn't be trying to sail too far off the wind anyway.

At one point I had fooled around with jam cleats mounted just on the sides of the cockpit for the sheet lines. But they were really snaggy when I was straddling the boat during launches. And they held the sheets right in the way of strokes if I wanted to paddle sail. So I removed them.

Yesterday and on days prior I'd been experimenting with a pair of Nite-Ize CamJams on the sheets. In theory, I thought these would be perfect - clip in on the aftmost front deck lines, and basically have quick-release jam cleats without permanent mounts. In practice, having the sheet anchor points so close to the sail meant they tended to squash the sail's batten from round to oval, and not to hold it very steady.

So what I found worked best was to wrap both sheets in a single loop around one hand so I didn't have to pinch my fingers too tight, and hold that hand at chest heightish. When I needed to paddle sail or to stream my GP off the stern on one side or the other as a "steerboard" (the historical ancestor to the modern boat rudder), I transferred both sheets to between my teeth. Aside from feeling gratifyingly piratical, this allows for instant depowering of the sail if needed, by simply going slack-jawed (more so than usual in my case...)

Hope this helps.
 
Ha! Super-interesting, because I have one of these WindPaddle sails and had no clue how to use it! (I haven't actually tried it yet.) The previous owner of one of my kayaks threw it in with the sale and it's just been sitting around.

I like the "holding sheets in your teeth" part, LOL. I wonder what WindPaddle recommends as far as sheet handling? (Is there any original documentation still around online?)

And (headed downwind) can you sail reasonably fast with one of these? I'm guessing they're not as fast as a Falcon sail...but if you can easily sail at a good paddling clip, then that's good in my book.
 
SWriverstone, I might have posted this before. The WindPaddle either came with some deck-mounted hardware or it was an optional accessory. I have it somewhere but never planned to use it as I don't want more (than the eyelets there now) holes in the deck.

If you put WindPaddle in a YouTube search, you will get lots of hits. Their website had one that raised an eyebrow as the person in the kayak recorded his GPS showing a 6 knot speed. BUT, in the background of the video, another kayaker, who was just paddling, passed them. So maybe that speed had more to do with the current than the wind :)

The first, most important issue to master with the WindPaddle sail is the twisting technique needed to collapse it back into the small-ish disc from whence it sprung.

Remember, once upon a time, long ago, in the remote past, people put sun blockers against the windshield inside the car? They blockers had some kind of spring perimeter that allowed them to collapse down and be stored in a small disc-shaped bag. The WindPaddle is like that.

The bottom of the sail clips to the deck bungee, and a line on each side, near the top, is attached to something (hand, deck cleat, teeth) to hold the sail upright. When not needed, but you still want it available, loosening that top cord allows the sail to fall back on the deck.

I tried it using it at a lake, but each time I raised it, the wind shifted, once it pushed the kayak backwards - so entertaining for my "friends". But just once, the wind was behind me, and the kayak surged forward, creating a bow wake. So in the right conditions - JUST the right conditions - it could be useful.

I'm thinking specifically about Ross Lake. I read that in the afternoon, the wind blows pretty consistently from South to North. If that's the case, a planned multi-day trip could start at the north end, padding south in the morning hours and setting up camp in the afternoon. When it's time to return, you'd wait until afternoon to get on the water and let that breeze push you northward.

Technical note: Yes, the action of a sail is usually to "pull" you forward with the curvature providing the same lift as an airplane wing, but mounted vertically. But the design of the WindPaddle is such that it expects the wind to be predominantly behind it.
 
cougarmeat said:
Technical note: Yes, the action of a sail is usually to "pull" you forward with the curvature providing the same lift as an airplane wing, but mounted vertically. But the design of the WindPaddle is such that it expects the wind to be predominantly behind it.
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Seconding this. When correctly trimmed, my Pacific Action, Spirit and Falcon sails "suck" as well as "blow" due to the laminar flow/low pressure area on the far side. But the WindPaddle is more like a spinnaker - just there to grab a big ol' bucket of air on downwind runs.
 
I love the idea of kayakwriter holding the reins in his teeth while shooting pics, as his sea pony dances over the waves. A la Rooster Cogburn (True Grit) for us old timers. Yeehaa!
 
dimit said:
I love the idea of kayakwriter holding the reins in his teeth while shooting pics, as his sea pony dances over the waves. A la Rooster Cogburn (True Grit) for us old timers. Yeehaa!
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"Fill your hand, you son of a (beach)..."
 
For some reason my GoPro only recorded 90 second clips from which I've grabbed screenshoots (it seems to be the memory chip may need a complete reformatting.)

I hit the water at JSA shortly after 9 yesterday morning. Did a straight shot to Third Beach. Looped around Siwash Rock, then followed the shoreline east to Sunset Beach. After a brief bilge break, I hoisted the Falcon Sail and followed a series of downwind tacks back to JSA.
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SWriverstone said:
Crickets are chirping here...is this because people have mothballed their kayaks and are going into hibernation until May 2026? (Yes, a shameless attempt to get people talking again, LOL—admins feel free to delete if you want.)

I for one really suffer this time of year. Not because I'm afraid of cold and rainy weather...but because my local 10-square-mile lake is drained to a mudflat for the winter—meaning if I want to paddle, I have to drive at least 30 minutes each way to get to another lake that isn't drained during the winter. (And there's the coast, but it's a 2-hour roundtrip.)

The only exercise I've found that even comes close to being as good for me as paddling (physically and psychologically) is XC skiing...and we typically don't get reliable snow for skiing in the Cascade Range 'til mid-December.

So for the next 6 weeks I'll be gritting my teeth and going to the gym, attempting to string together some long sequence of machines that will still poorly approximate the full-body workout paddling gives me.
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How do you manage the full body workout? My butt always goes to sleep. After a whole week of paddling I can barely walk!
 
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