Stand Up Paddle Discussion with Pro Surfer and Jim from Tropical Blends Surf – Video Part 1

[singlepic=1802,188,125] We hear from this two-part video a discussion between Jim of Tropical Blends Surf and a Pro Surfer about stand up paddles. They talk about the different aspects of the paddle -- from the grip to the blade -- and even the history and global influence put into the stand up paddle.I think the bottom line here is that stand up paddle surfing is still in its early stages and it's good that people are out to try new stuff for the sake of the development of the sport.(click thumbnail to launch video)[gallery=26]Jim: You know what, off the top of my head I say 8rsquo;6rdquo; and 7rsquo;8rdquo; or something like that. Definitely smaller 80-pound, 90-pound kids. Thatrsquo;s sort of a result of many conversations and some experiments that wersquo;re doing.Man: I like the concept ndash; just how much pull you get just because you have long deeper blade so you can go deeper or just tap on the surface for shallow. Then you donrsquo;t get like yaw, you know what I mean, like for big blades. Unless you got a 14-foot, 15, 16-foot board, yoursquo;re just going to go across the channel then big blade is good, because all that rail, the board is just going straight anyway. But the shorter you get the more yaw you get and the less blade you can ndash; itrsquo;s weird huh? I think that has to do with how big this is. Like how much blade you got on there is dependent how big a board yoursquo;re riding here ndash; because for smaller boards you need smaller blades.Jim: Whatrsquo;s interesting about what yoursquo;re saying is, if you take a regular blade, letrsquo;s just look at our friends here for a second. If you look at where this is placed when you dig it in the water, right? Now I dig this through the water and I got all of my surface area basically at one place and if I want to take this a little, itrsquo;s very difficult just tohellip;Man: hellip;tap on top.Jim: hellip;just to get a little bit of this paddle especially when the board is like this. And as I was saying to these guys earlier, ldquo;How many times are you ever parallel to the water like you are in a canoe? Yoursquo;re always something, up, one way or the other.rdquo; You take this paddle and if you want half or you donrsquo;t need that much of a dig, you can take that much of a dig. You want the whole thing you got the whole thing.Man: The only good thing about like a shorter fuller paddle for different applications is as a cane, like Irsquo;m falling over, ldquo;Whoa!rdquo;, or Irsquo;m turning, ldquo;Whoa!rdquo;Jim: But you got the same area, almost the same if we were to measure the actual area of the paddle on that one, itrsquo;s almost the same. Wersquo;re actually going to do another one. The newest one I have coming take a quarter inch all the way up on this. Like I was saying to these guys earlier, Irsquo;ve got a customer who is helping me on this project. He is the director of hydrology at Pearl Harbor, so hersquo;s literally a rocket scientist for water.Man: Right, hydrodynamics, yeah.Jim: Yeah, and hersquo;s telling me that we have a direct relation to the efficiency of the paddle and ndash; X equals work, right? If we pull this stroke through, what is the efficient area of this to actually give us the work we want? So we both we went out and paddle a few times with this and we decided that this experiment is going to go with the next, a little bit smaller size.Man: Check it outhellip;Jim: Bigger shaft ndash; the shaft is too narrow.Man: And you know, itrsquo;s weird because wersquo;re so in like the development and like every season we lsquo;re going to keep on seeing new stuff thatrsquo;s why itrsquo;s exciting you know, because then you got the guys, the fans of Keo loa, and those guys like those paddles because the shaft is small. And then so some people go, ldquo;Oh, I can wrap my whole hand around it.rdquo; But then other people go, ldq...