On the DW journey atm , and while practicing on the flat I decided to record my paddling speeds with a SUP paddle ,large size hand paddles and just bare hands.

SUP paddle ..9.4 km/hr
On knees with large hand paddles ...8.6 km/hr
On knees with bare hands...8.7km/hr

using garmin watch strapped to my waist belt , maybe not super accurate but interesting.

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kobo said..
On the DW journey atm , and while practicing on the flat I decided to record my paddling speeds with a SUP paddle ,large size hand paddles and just bare hands.

SUP paddle ..9.4 km/hr
On knees with large hand paddles ...8.6 km/hr
On knees with bare hands...8.7km/hr

using garmin watch strapped to my waist belt , maybe not super accurate but interesting.

What are the board dimensions for these speeds?

I found that laying down prone paddle was same as SUP or maybe even slightly faster.

I'm on a 7'3 Sunova elite 23" wide and 120 lts ...I'm hand paddling kneeling on the board and it feels faster than the SUP paddle but the records show different. I might repeat this again and see if the results stay the same or similar.

I'm trying to make sense of the similarity in speed between hand paddles and bare hands. I guess you could get a higher cadence with bare hands and in the end the same paddle power. Similar I guess to going to a smaller SUP paddle - cadence goes up but overall power is still limited by your stroke

Technique from years of paddling with bare hands, to learning a new technique with paddles on your hands.

Does the Garmin take an average over 5 or 10 seconds?.

I was thinking that maybe the paddle and hand paddle give a very high "peak" speed on the paddle pull that helps with getting on the wave and the bare hands give a more even traction with a lower peak but higher low.

So the averages come out similar but catching a wave is easier with paddle/handpaddle.

I think it's just a peak speed but I'm not totally sure , the cadence is definitely higher with bare hands, but the ultimate speed felt similar to using the hand paddles.I strapped the garmin watch to my waist belt to eliminate hand swing from being on my wrist.

We tested all the watches at once , 2/ Apple watches , 1/ Garmin & 1/ Ripcurl , so all those watches were on one person . 4 all up , speed wise the Apples were very close , Garmin high and Ripcurl slow. The gyro in the Garmin really is not meant for surf , it's more for running and walking , so the sudden lunge foiling or paddling just throws out it's speed. Garmin does not run IOS Apps only it's own Garmin Connect which are really lame in the scheme of things for surf. It's unfortunate because if Garmin ran IOS Apps they would rule the world. IMHO

I guess the hand paddle has advantages in being able to pull the board off the water at the critical moment rather than being about board speed.

In my journey so far it seems to me to be critical to be able to pump the board off the water at the right time as just board paddle speed seems rarely enough. I am a novice though.

Be good if someone else did the same test to see if they get similar results

Kobo,
I am surprised to hear you went faster with a sup paddle. Unfortunately, I don't own a narrow DW board, but last summer I spent some time doing speed comparisons with an Apple Watch on a 108ltr. 9ft. longboard sup. I was always quite a bit faster knee padding and prone paddling with just hands. Like up to 4km/hr faster. I was also much faster prone paddling a 6'1" short board so maybe Hdip is right that years of practice doing something does help with technique. Or, or course, I could just be a bad sup paddler, although my sup paddle speeds were similar to yours, in the 9's. I would really like to try paddling one of those new DW boards as well as hand paddles just to see what it is like, although I suspect it would turn out my numbers wouldn't improve at all unless I put in some time. Still, they look like really interesting boards. What speeds do you guys need to hit knee or prone paddling to get them out of the water?

I didn't know what to expect really but I can feel that I hit the wall with the SUP paddle and the board starts ploughing and doesn't want to go any faster, I don't get that feeling on my knees paddling by hand and it feels easier because it's symmetrical I guess. If you are right then it should be much easier to paddle up DW using hands rather than a paddle which is interesting and maybe not what I expected.

I've done some basic test comparisons;
My Garmin 935 set on 2 gps systems against my car speedo, boat gps map plotter and friends Apple watch when we both efoil.
With out going into detail the differences were negligible.
I am after a gps watch that provides the fastest speeds regardless of accuracy

Had another crack today with the paddle and my max speed was the same as before 9.4 km/h
This time I just left my garmin on my wrist instead of the waist belt and it seems that arm swing makes no difference to the recorded speeds even when paddling with bare hands. I would be interested to know what speed would be enough to get started on a DW.

That's plenty fast enough to get up in good bumps. Now it's just learning the timing

My last little mini DW attempts with SUP and hand paddles had the HPs win big with 11.6 kmh versus 7.1 kmh max speed with SUP. Almost got up on hand paddles. In hindsight I should have gone further out into the sweet spot where the bumps were really standing up. It was gorge level conditions with current opposing 25-30knts. The two attempts were sandwiched between wing sessions on my 60L with long mast and 800 wing.

11.6 km/hr sounds good ,I've only managed 10.2 with SUP and slightly less with hp. My SUP speeds seem to be improving all the time where my hp speeds have stayed the same even using bigger hp.