Today I was working on a difficult problem on my real work, and needed a break, so I went paddling in the Thunderbolt. (BTW: If you know anything about OpenSymphony’s WebWork, please have a look at this question.)
I didn’t want to encounter any waves, and I wanted it to be deep enough to paddle well and close enough to shore to swim in if I dumped, so I went to use Dan’s dock even though I knew he was out of town. I started out, and immediately had to go back to the dock to take out the toe pull-bar. It was just located in an awkward position and I couldn’t get comfortable with it. But once I got it out, I felt extremely comfortable in the boat. It didn’t feel tippy, and I had no trouble controlling it even in a few boat wakes. The boat doesn’t turn all that well, and doing a 180 at a buoy is not going to be easy, and I really don’t like the tiller bar steering. It doesn’t seem hugely faster than the Looksha, even though the lighter weight means I’ll probably be able to paddle it for longer distances. It also picks up floating debris, both on the rudder and on the bow. A couple of times I purposely ran over a stick or twig to try to scrape a leaf off the bow, and that worked pretty well. I also tried the bouncing technique I’ve seen Mike F do in his EFT, but had little to no luck with that.
But all in all, I feel as comfortable in the Thunderbolt now as I felt in the Looksha in, say, May of this year. Keep in mind that I paddled the Looksha through October and November, and then March and April, and this is my second time in the Thunderbolt. That’s what a year of good training in all sorts of conditions will do for a guy.
When I finished, Dan had arrived home and he watched me paddle around a bit. He was impressed, and convinced me that if I work hard for the next couple of weeks, I could be ready to paddle the Thunderbolt at the Small Swells and Long Lake races. We’ll see. While we were talking, a boat came by and he suggested that I go ride its wash. It wasn’t moving very fast, but it was throwing up a good wake. That was actually ideal, because without much work I could play around and try different positions. That was great, even the positions where the water was pouring into the cockpit right over my left hip. One of the better positions had one wake breaking over the front of the boat and *not* coming in the cockpit, while the second wake was just behind me pushing me along. I don’t know if it was extremely efficient of not, but it sure looked cool. A few minutes of that made me feel much more in control of the boat, and more happy about eventually facing some waves with this boat, but it also put so much water in the boat that I was thinking it wouldn’t look very cool if I sunk, so I turned back.
Tomorrow the team is having a 5 mile “race” on the canal against each other. I’m going to paddle the Thunderbolt and see how it goes. Oh, and I think I have an idea what to do about that WebWork problem.