The team I'm with is having extreme difficulty turning. I'm the steerer and it's not me. When our team went over to Hawaii for the world sprints turning was sooo easy, the hawaiian canoes have a very flat bottom. New Zealand canoes are more v shape. The paddlers are pretty much all around 80kgs but our 2 middle guys sitting at 3 and 4 are about 120-130kgs. I think this is the problem. With the hawaiian canoes we turn quick and fast, with NZ canoes we turn slow and kinda like we drift around. When heading into the turn everything is ok until the boat is side ways then it kinda stays there turning slowly, 1 and 2 are drawing and I'm drawing too. Also the width we need to turn is about 20metres, 10 on each side, where in hawaii we did about 5 on each side.
The only thing different about our crew is our 2 big guys. Every body else seems to have 6 even people.
So yea any body else having same problem?
Submitted by NZ_Stylez on Mon, 10/18/2004 - 8:48pm
i had the opportunity to steer a Hawaiian Canoe Club 19 and under crew for the world sprints in Tahiti and learned a few things about turning from them cause those tahitian canoes are beasts to turn and i'm sure like the new zealand canoes. I think that we would go into the turn and have both of seats one and two uni ing and then after a few strokes seat two would come over and begin to kahi really hard and i think that seat three was also kahiing. Seat 5 would pull the canoe over from the back and i would just poke and try and yank the thing around as hard as i could. We'd have to go into the turn all the way on the right side of the lane and begin the turn sooner than normal. Now that i think about it that seems kind of wrong, i feel like we couldn't have had only seat four paddling us through the turn.. haha, i dunno, just try experimenting with different combinations of people pulling and poking... goodluck
#1 Tue, 10/19/2004 - 8:35pm