some hints on stopping damage on board rails from paddle I;ve tried different types tape with limited success
Ha !! I know a guy who has pretty much scraped the rails off his board from so much paddling ! So he figured it was time to make himself a new one....
Suck it in !!
Tape and other crap will effect the water dynamics.... Saw a girl paddling in The Great Melbourne Paddle Race the other day with s stack of electrical tape dangling off the paddle... I told her, "just stop for two strokes and rip all that crap off".... she kept paddling with all the dangling bits..... Why.....???
there are 2 things that i have used, "super ding tape" if you do an inet search you will come up with it, works well, its a clear thick poly tape and also you can get "paddle guard" you will find this on ebay from the usa, its a rubber moulding that glues to the edge of your paddle, this also protects your paddle if you are paddling over oyster beds or a rocky bottom.
For the "weekend waterman" like myself try a white rubber moulding (you'll know the profile when you see it) from Clark Rubber that you buy by the metre. I used Araldite (or similar) and I have no paddle dings at all on my board.
cheers froggo
Taping your paddle is essential. All it takes is a clumsy wipeout or dropping it in the car park and your $600 carbon fibre paddle blade has a nasty chunk out of it.
Standard electrical tape is fine. If you do it right it won't come off and it is dead easy to renew it. Just put a neatly applied layer around the rail and then run a wrap about 20-30 cm up the shaft.
Not sure about chips along the rail. There was talk about some dud batches of boards coming out a couple of years ago before they worked out the resin formulation for rails. Most modern boards barely chip at all. I have never had a rail chip ever. It's not from skill. In a fit of frustration (first time on a short board in chop) I gave the board a thorough beating. I felt better and there were only black marks on the board. They polished out easily.
I took a new SB sup out for a demo recently. I noticed that it had a protective clear film along the rail!
A layer of good quality insulation tape on your paddle blade and super ding tape or similar on the rails of your board and lots of paddling practice. And don't listen to all the hoopla about rail tape affecting the performance of the board pffffffffffffttttttttttttt hogwash.
Bunnings has CLEAR WATERPROOF Duct tape ... at about $3:50 a rail its worth it ..
sorry ,but it had to be said sooner or later.
