: I went paddling yesterday with a group of plastic boats. One of the guys
: loaned me a boat to paddle. Now, I am not a young man and I don't get to
: paddle very often. But at the the end of the day I was tired but everyone
: was way faster than me. My ego has no problem with that, especially since
: I was beat and not to impressed with the boat I had been loaned.

: But this got me to thinking about my design and what the numbers really mean
: out on the water. I decided to take the Hydro number and graph them from
: the different versions of the design and just see how they compared. One
: of the big things I was curious about was the scaled down 16' version vs.
: my 19' I was planning on building.

: Once I get these into a graph where I can compare it comes back to what does
: it really mean? How much difference is really noticeable? I used the total
: resistance figure to make my graph. Looking at the 3.5 knot speed there
: the worst design has 2.37 lbs resistance verses 2.1 lbs for the best
: design. Seems minor and I would assume not noticeable to the average
: paddler.

: So this brings me to question. At what point do these number really matter to
: the average paddler? Are we looking at .5 lbs or 1 lbs before we could
: really see a difference?

As the others were saying, sorta I think, is that the paddler doesn't make alot of power, it's not a really efficient thing we're doing. So small differences in resistance can mean alot.

It's only really something you notice when you're paddling with someone else, or against a clock, with gps etc. Just out paddling by yourself it's kinda hard to tell the difference between going slow and going fast, which might be 2 mph difference (though that 2 mph may well be 40 - 50%)

All other things being the same (which they rarely are) a longer boat can go faster, might not, but has the ability.

Bill H.