In a previous message I mentioned a term that some might not be familiar with; climbing angle.

Think back to when you were a child, riding in the back seat of your parents 
car.  The window is down, you're travelling the highway at 65mph (~104.5 km), 
and you stick your hand out the window, with your fingers pointing toward the
front of the vehicle. You notice that if you tilt your and slightly up or 
down the pressure of the wind will make your whole arm go up or down.  If 
you're fingers are pointing straight into the wind, your hand slices through 
and doesn't go up and down.  Angle your fingers ever so slightly up, and 
your hand goes up as well.  Angle them down and your hand starts to drop.

Now you're sitting in your kayak.  You paddle forward and pick up a bit of 
speed then stop paddling and lay the back your paddle blade flat on the 
surface, the shaft perpendicular to the boat, and watch as it skims across 
the surface.  Try angling the forward (or leading) edge of the paddle downward.
If you haven't capsized (or even if you did) you'll notice that the paddle 
dove toward the bottom of the water.  Now paddle some more to pick up some 
speed, and this time tilt the leading edge of the paddle slightly up.  You 
probably won't notice much because the paddle is already on the surface and 
you're not going to be able to go fast enough to overcome gravity and have it 
lift off the water surface.  However, if you try pushing down on the paddle at 
the same time as it's planing across the surface with the leading edge 
slightly up (a climbing angle) you'll notice that there is a lot of 
resistance, that is, it is difficult to push the paddle deeper in the water.
That also means, the pressure of the water under the blade when 
it is skimming across the water with a climbing angle is creating lift, 
in other words, if the paddle started out below the surface, it will tend 
to rise.

So how can you use a climbing angle when you are just paddling your boat.
Let's look at a few paddling skills and we'll find that it's used in almost
every stroke you do.

Low Brace Turn

In the exercise above, we had the paddle more or less perpendicular to 
the boat and found that with a little climbing angle we created some 
resistance which kept the paddle from going deeper in the water.  That
resistance is what provides support if we were start to capsize towards
the paddle.  This support is what allows a paddler to tilt the hull towards the
paddle so that the water is flowing under the side of the boat rather 
than straight down the keel line.  Due to the shape of the hull, the
waterline is shortened, and the curve of the hull will cause the boat to
turn. If you position the paddle such that it is angled slightly toward 
the stern from perpendicular, set the blade with a slight climbing angle,
you'll find that it's easy to edge the boat over quite a bit 
and maintain very little down pressure on the paddle blade while carving
a nice tight turn.

Sculling Draw

A lot of beginners have trouble with a sculling draw stroke and it has
caused many a capsize when the paddle got too close to the hull, and 
rather than let go with the top hand the paddler tried to pull the paddle
away (which pulls them right over).  The trick to an efficient sculling
draw is to use a very slight climbing angle.  In this case, however, the
paddle shaft angle and the paddle blade are nearly vertical.  As a result,
the "climbing angle" of the blade causes the pressure "under" the blade to
be transmitted in a horizontal direction.  The important thing to 
remember is that the leading edge of the paddle blade must be "higher" (
or in this case further away from the hull) than the trailing edge. 
The means that when the paddle changes directions, the leading edge much be 
changed at the same time.  The sculling draw is often described as using a 
figure-8 motion with your paddle.  I find this description difficult to 
visualize and put into practice.  Instead, imagine trying to slice the 
paddle in long, slow strokes from bow to stern and vice versa while 
maintaining a slight climbing angle in each direction.  If the paddle shaft 
is held the same distance from the hull throughout the stroke, the net 
effect will be that you are drawn sideways.

Sculling Brace

A sculling brace uses the same motion as a sculling draw but instead of
having a near vertical paddle shaft angle the shade should be close to
horizontal as possible.  One of the most common mistakes most beginners
make when trying a sculling brace is that they use too much blade angle.
  
Remember what happened when you had your hand out that car window and you 
raised your fingers up too much?  Your hand shot toward the sky and then 
backwards.  You ended up pushing against the air.  Imagine if you had 
really, really big hands and what effect that air pressure might have 
on the forward speed of the vehicle.  The same thing happens 
when you are in your kayak, and you use too much climbing angle with 
your paddle.  If you angle the leading edge up too much, you're just pushing
the water sideways and it's not giving you much support no matter how fast
you move the paddle back and forth.  However, if you take a long slow stroke,
fore and aft, with a slight climbing edge in each direction you'll be 
constantly pushing water down, and the net result will be that the stroke
will support you even when you're leading the kayak over onto it's side.


Rolling