Speed testing a canoe

[Jim Dodd]

I have always wanted a way to compare my canoes, from one to another, as far as speed, and efficiency.
I threw together a bracket to hold my GPS, and with a couple of spring clamps, I can easily transfer, from one canoe to the next.

Now for the test.
First to be fair. I need a windless day, and still water.

I will paddle as hard as I can to get the maximum speed,(at least what I'm capable of )that's not very fast.

Then I want to see how long it takes for the canoe to drop in speed, say from 5 mi/hr- 2 mi/hr, this I will call Glide.

Any comments, or suggestions ?

Jim

 

[stripperguy]

Jim,

The serious stuff(military, laboratory testing) is done in a tow tank, with instrumented tow gear. Too bad you don't have access to the tow tanks at Newport News...
Less scientific results are often gathered with a tow boat and instrumented tow line, often done for planing hulls.
Those tests are usually done with real time data acquisition, and various levels of ballast and roll, pitch and yaw angles.

But, for a backyard build and comparison, your plan sounds just fine. You'll need to measure the decel rate vs time too, as the losses vary much from hull to hull and are decidedly non-linear. If you plot the velocity vs time for a group of hulls, you'll likely see a kink in the plot, above or below which the slope changes markedly.
Also, you should try various loads when measuring the "glide", some hulls will do much better than others, the data will guide you.
Max hull speed is one thing, but 80%, 70% of hull speed is another story all together. Some of the modern designs can be held at 70% of hull speed fairly easily, but require a trained olympian to hold full speed!

 

[Alan Gage]

GPS testing is fun. To be as accurate as possible I think it should be paired with a heart rate monitor to gauge how much effort you're exerting.

Maximum speed, while interesting, can be a bit misleading and doesn't necessarily have much correlation to normal paddling speeds. On some of my racing boats sprint speed might be 1mph faster than a day tripper but "race pace", something I can maintain for 6 or 8 miles, may only be .1 or .2 mph faster and the effort required for a lazy paddle around the lake would be pretty much identical. Once you start getting below 4.5 or 5mph the effort to maintain speed drops dramatically and the efficiency differences between boats starts to disappear.

When speed testing my boats I like to pick a speed, let's say 5mph, and then try to maintain that speed for at least a mile while watching the heart rate monitor to judge how much effort it took. If one boat took an average heart rate of 150bpm and a different boat took 157bpm to maintain the same speed over the same distance you can see which boat is more efficient at that speed. Add or subtract .5mph and try it again. Then pick a 3 mile course and do it at maximum effort and see what your average speed is. This does a nice job of showing where a particular hull starts to lose efficiency and how much speed you can reasonably expect from the hull. If you only test for a 1/4 mile it will feel easy to maintain relatively high speeds but maintaining it for a mile or more tends to even things out.

You'll find that at a certain speed you'll start to hit a wall. On relatively long and efficient solo hulls up to 5mph usually feels relatively easy. Jumping from 5 to 5.5mph takes a lot more effort than going from 4.5 to 5mph. Going from 5.5 to 6mph takes a great deal of effort and after that it seems like no matter how much harder you paddle you just don't go any faster, even though your heart rate continues to sky rocket and you cough up a lung. Other people won't be able to push the same hull over 5 or 5.5mph while some paddlers will be able to get it up to 6.5 or 7mph. Technique and conditioning make a huge difference that's hard to appreciate until you see someone paddle circles around you in an idenctical hull.

Without a heart rate monitor I think sprint speed and average speed over a 2-3 mile all out effort would be reasonably accurate for comparisons between hull.

When trying to time how long it takes for the hull to decelerate from 5 to 2mph I'd worry about the boat not tracking perfectly straight or starting to carve a turn half way through the test and skewing the results.

Looking forward to seeing some of your results!

Alan

 

[Jim Dodd]

I'm in wait for Alan, to build a "Tow Tank" !

Stripperguy

I had thought about putting a pull scale on a hull, weigh it down a little, and push it into the current of the river that runs by my shop, and I might still.
The amount of pull, assuming all the test hulls were weighed the same, and the pull scale attached at the same location, as far as distance above the waterline.
And the distribution of the weight was the same, might yield some useful data.

But a canoe is propelled by a force applied from the sides, alternating from left to right. In my layman opinion, that changes the whole ball game.

That's why I went to the GPS.

Cruise speed IS another thing, to consider. As well as acceleration. All of these would be tough to eliminate the variables, especially for us "HOMIES" !

I guess that's why I haven't seen articles on the subject.

Alan !
Do you know Ted Cramer in Rock Rapids ? He's an animal with a paddle ! He would be a great hull tester !

Thanks Guys for your insight!!! If this was easy it would have been done a long time ago !

Gene Jensen was famous for a quote. Some one asked him when he was going to retire from designing canoes ? He said, " When I build one that goes by itself ! "


Jim

 

[Alan Gage]

Do you know Ted Cramer in Rock Rapids ? He's an animal with a paddle ! He would be a great hull tester !

Yes, I know Ted. Nice guy and a great paddler. I first met him at a race in Cedar Falls. He was paddling tandem with his son Tommy, who is a few years younger than me. They were in a C2 pro boat and I was in 20'x18" wide kayak. It was one of my first races. On paper my boat should easily beat their boat but we had a fantastic race running neck and neck the entire way. I dropped them in some shallows and built a big lead. Figured that was the end of them and took the opportunity to back off a little and rebuild the oxygen content of my blood. Next thing I knew they were passing me! They beat me in a sprint to the finish.

Next year we were back again and I now had a lot more training under my belt and was a much faster paddler than I'd been the year before. Instead of paddling with his son, Tommy, Ted was paddling with his normal tandem partner, some old English guy named Gareth Stevens. Didn't look like it would be such a competition this year but at the crack of the gun I found myself struggling to jump on their wake and no matter what I just couldn't get around them. We hung together for a few miles and once in a while they'd let me slip ahead so they could ride my wake for a change. I was about ready to die when Gareth suggested there was no point in us all killing ourselves when we were so evenly matched (Ha!) and that we should back off, paddle together, and then give a good sprint at the end for the crowd.

I was only too happy to agree since my heart rate had been pegged at about 175 for the last 30 minutes and I knew I couldn't stick with them much longer. So they backed off the pace to where it appeared they were paddling effortlessly and calmly chatted away with me. I tried to grunt out one syllable responses in between gasps for air. Their "relaxed" pace was anything but for me.

About 100 yards from the finish we started the sprint and they just smoothly pulled away from me.

I've got plenty of humiliating racing stories like that.

Alan

 

[latremorej]

in my very limited opinion, all that fancy eficiency jazz is over thought for most of us 'commoners'

If it were up to me I would take along my daughters metronome, set it to a comfortable stroke rate and paddle a measured distance for time. In the end, it don't really matter how much one boat weighs more than the other, what does matter is which boat got to the end faster. As long as you time your strokes to that metronome the same in all boats, and conditions are about the same, then the numbers won't lie. Maybe I'm under thinking it, just my 2c

Jason

Btw, I still enjoy hearing how you guys actually measure this stuff out though!

 

[Jim Dodd]

Sorry for high jacking my own thread ! I must suffer from ADD !

Alan. I too have a few stories of Ted, but mine are more embarrassing ! I'll only tell them in private !

Jason. Getting back to Speed testing !

I was hoping I could come up with a simple, efficient way to test ! Measuring the amount of energy applied is going to be a tough one !
For now I'll put it off until I have more time !

Thanks Guys !

But keep exploring the idea !

Jim

 

[Alan Gage]

I think you can do it fairly accurately, especially for comparison purposes, without something like a heart rate monitor to test exertion so long as you test it over a longer distance. It's easy to crank it up to 5.5 mph for a minute and tell yourself you could keep that pace all day because it feels pretty easy for short periods of time, but after 1/2 mile it gets a lot harder.

Alan

 

[Guest]

I've asked this elsewhere before,has anyone tested paddling effort of various hulls? That is,the energy required to maintain a reasonable cruising speed. That means more to me than all out maximum speed.
Turtle

 

[Jim Dodd]

I've asked this elsewhere before,has anyone tested paddling effort of various hulls? That is, the energy required to maintain a reasonable cruising speed. That means more to me than all out maximum speed.
Turtle

Agreed !

I had to start somewhere .

What's the first thing you do when you build a race car ? See how fast it will go ! Right ?

In a Soap Box Derby, first one from point A-point B, is the winner. If I could run canoes down hill, in current, the slowest one would be the winner. Right ?
That's where the pull test in current came to mind.

Thanks for the input !!!

Jim

 

[ppine]

Jim,
You must be having fun with the speed testing. Canoe speed is a function of waterline length. Since they are displacement hulls they start to resist being pushed faster past a certain point and going fast becomes inefficient. That said, please share your results.

On river trips the speed of the current and the wind velocity and direction are the two biggest variables that determine speed. Tripping often requires long hours of paddling and top speed is therefore somewhat irrelevant.

 

[Alan Gage]

I've asked this elsewhere before,has anyone tested paddling effort of various hulls? That is,the energy required to maintain a reasonable cruising speed. That means more to me than all out maximum speed.
Turtle

I have with most of my solo canoes using a GPS and heart rate monitor. From what I can tell if you are content to paddle at 3.5 mph the efficiency differences are quite insignificant. One may be a little more efficient than the other at lower speeds but the effort required is so low that, at least to me, it doesn't seem to matter.

More important is the ability to have an efficient forward stroke with shorter and more highly rockered hulls to maintain a decent cruising speed on flat water in comparison with a longer and straighter tracking boat. My Kite (Osprey) is considerably faster for me now than it used to be simply because I have a better forward stroke that doesn't require such a strong correction, which hurts momentum and slows the cadence.

Increase in speed and increase in effort are far from linear and what I find most interesting is at what point the effort begins to increase dramatically for only a small increase in speed. This is where I feel the efficiency levels of different hulls becomes apparent. It's when you want to push it a little harder than your normal pace to try and beat the storm, sunset, or simply because you feel like getting a little workout or pushing yourself. The more efficient the hull the faster you'll go before hitting the wall.

The frustrating thing about really fast racing hulls is that they aren't really any faster than a tripping hull for the average paddler. But the great thing about them is that they always reward improved conditioning and technique. As you get better and stronger you can always push the boat faster. The same is true for a more traditional hull as well but the reward is much smaller and soon you'll be beating your brains out trying to squeeze out an extra .05mph and getting frustrated. It will take many years to reach that point on a racing hull.

I'll quit yapping now and let Jim reach his own conclusions. I'm very curious to see what he finds since not many people have done similar testing on their own boats. Or if they have they haven't posted the results.

Alan

 

[BWCA66]

I too am looking forward to see Jim's conclusions. I prefer to do testing from the back of a tandom with a partner who loves to paddle and seldom looks behind..........

 

[stripperguy]

I'm trying to remember the speeds that I could hold in my DY...6.5 to 7 mph was about tops for me, but I'm a cyclist, not a competitive paddler. I have the legs and lungs, but not the arms and abs.
4.5 mph was an easy enough to maintain pace for hours at a time.
I see we're all talking about the same relationships, that non linear effort vs velocity.
I like Alan's heart rate approach, but all the testing has to be done in a few days. After too many years of semi serious cycling (35 and counting), I can tell you that a person's fitness level can vary drastically over short periods of time.

So, I sit and wait for Jim's results, and for open water here at home!

 

[wysedav]

No Title

How about a trolling motor hung off the stern? Hinge the mount so the motor is essentially mounted like a vertical see saw. Use a fish scale on the upper end of the motor to measure the force.

 

[Guest]

I'm not trying to minimize this experiment or hijack this thread,it's festinating. I am not the strongest paddler and have had some physical limitations,so effort is a big thing for me. Unlike another poster,I have felt big differences in paddling effort of different canoes My Hemlock Kestrel and Keewayden 14 paddle with the least perceived effort, my Mohawk solo 13 is noticeably slower. I remember being disappointed in my first paddle in a Magic, known to be a "fast" canoe. I would think glide would be a good measure of paddling effort? Got me thinking of launching empty weighted canoes across my pond with consistant force and measuring distance traveled. First paddle of the year scheduled for Sat. should get my mind off trivialities.
Turtle

 

[Jim Dodd]

I know what you are saying ! Sometimes you just can't MEASURE something it's more a feeling. Some canoes Feel faster than others !

I paddled a friends Magic, and loved it ! Always hoping to build something as close to it, as I can, without Copying it.

Always enjoy your time on the water !

Jim