45Per Steve Cramer:
>Looking at pics of surf ski racers and outrigger canoeists, I see some
>calf tethers. It appears that the surf ski crowd has different ideas
>about tethers than the sea kayak crowd.
Some sea kayakers are adamantly against any sort of tether.
Among all surf ski users that I know/correspond with, some sort
of tether is considered mandatory.
A distingui****ng "feature" of surf skis is how readily and
quickly they're swept away by even a moderate breeze - much, much
faster than anybody can hope to swim. They're light, they
expose a *lot* of surface area to the wind, and they don't swamp
- instead floating high on the water.
One really has to see it to fully appreciate it.
You lose your grip on an un-tethered ski and it's all over within
seconds. Some will say "just don't let go of the ski"... but I
find that's not a realistic expectation. One *will* get dumped
periodically and some of those times one will lose contact with
the ski.
It's my understanding that in areas like Australia and South
Africa, skis are commonly equipped with footstraps, which
mitigate the loss of contact issue significantly. But they
don't eliminate it and users there seem to have gone over to calf
leashes.
A misplaced paddle can be retrieved as long as one is mounted on
the ski and has at both arms working.
I've been trying both leash types on my surf ski.
After A/B-ing between the two leash types all afternoon on a
local lake last week and trying the calf leash in the ocean at a
local inlet with 20-25 mph winds and a truly heinous current
yesterday, I've come around to favoring a calf leash that's
tethered to a ring that runs fore-aft on a taut deck line.
With that setup, the hull weathercocks into the wind, whitewater,
and/or current.
Also, when coming in/walking out through surf - where the
sensible thing to do is detach the calf leash; if there's an
issue with bathers or surfers, the calf leash can be wrapped
around the paddle loom instead of being disconnected - giving a
tem****ary paddle leash.
--
PeteCresswell
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