Clever Me Part 2

Well, it's that time of year again, time to renew the web hosting. And for those of you that don't know, that has become a lot more expensive than it used to be. Fifty dollars a year is now several hundred. Not to mention the price of domain names has gone up ten-fold.

And I just found out that the nice folks at PayPal disabled all my Support buttons, and I never got a notice (although that may be my fault.) In any case, it is all working again now, so if you would like to make a small donation to help defray these costs, it would be greatly appreciated.

This paddle is nearing the end of its life, so I decided to try an experiment. I added a "drip notch". This is a small sharp-edged notch that the water flow can't follow. Instead it departs the edge of the paddle and falls well outside the boat. I hardly got a drop of water on me.

To make the notch, simply drill a 1/4" hole by the edge of the plastic blade, 6-7 inches from the base. Then file it to the shape you see here, with a sharp corner at the edge. The back-cut assures the the stream can't jump over the notch to the other side.

I can't claim this idea, I've seen a few paddles with this feature.


Mercer Lake
( 40.26783, -74.64423 )

  1. Mercer Lake - Hamilton ( 40.26561, -74.64191 )
  2. Mercer Lake - West Windsor ( 40.26960, -74.64114 )

Mercer Lake is actually a big gravel pit that was dug out for highway fill. In 1975, someone got the bright idea of damming it off, and it turned into one of the nicest lakes in the state. The lake fills from a creek to the east, and the water is very clean. Mercer county turned the whole area into a beautiful park, great for all sorts of other activities as well.

Printed from njkayak.net