Ka'ala Single Bend Adjustable Outrigger Paddle

Very good training paddle.

Pros: 1. The adjustable paddle seems to be a right direction to go; almost all the top level kayak paddles are adjustable for more than a decade. 2. For non-racing paddling, this paddle allows to take only 1 spare even for a crew of 6'4'' guy and 5'3'' gal, which is helpful for trips where a broken paddle is rare but can't be totally neglected. 3. Bact to this paddle; it holds water as good as one can expect from none-carbon blade; definitely worth the price. The same about weight: definitely heavier than any of my C1 carbon paddles (either by Bob Zawerall or Canadian) but not terribly heavier. Paddling OC1, I got about the same (inside statistical deviation) speed as with lighter (and with smaller blades) carbon paddles on 600 m intervals; I was about 1 minute slower with this one on 15 km course but this is not statistically valuable because it obviously wasn't on the same day. I got some totally unexpected conclusion about paddle length to maximum speed ratio to which I would never come without purchasing this paddle: on 600 m stretch, changing paddle length by 2" didn't influence my speed; or rather the difference was less than the one entailed by wind change, motorboat waves and alike. This conclusion is so unexpected that I ' planning to repeat the test. Again, these 600 m runs were all done in the same training session and I alternated the length sporadically to avoid tiredness effect. Anyway, must have to experiment with length excluding all the other characteristics. Cons: 1) "ruts" on the lower surface of the upper handle hurt fingers if I forget about them for a single switch. I'd certainly prefer to have the handle smooth; that by the way would also slightly decrease the weight, wouldn't it? I see no benefits in having those cuts on the handle low surface. 2) as it's adjustable anyway, I ' like to have an option to make in at least 1'' longer, perhaps even 2''. I'm a tall man and I like to use 54'' paddle in deep water canoe races when I am in a solo canoe; but I certainly am not the tallest man in the town.

Ka'ala review

I bought this paddle to see if it would suit our new senior paddling program. It is exactly what we were looking for. Excellent design. We intend to order up to a dozen paddles to sustain our program.

Outrigger paddle

Good feature to allow adjustments on handle length.