Picked up my new Ke Nalu paddles from Jonathan the importer in Melbourne
recently, though haven't had a lot of time to try them.
First up, the quality is superb, being possibly the lightest paddles out on the market right now. They come in thee sizes being the 8" Wiki, 8.5" Maliko and 9' Molokai. Further info here at kenalu.com/
The shafts are thin, being slightly tapered at the paddle head and thinnest at the handle and come in three stiffness models. The clever part is all are held together with simple hot gun glue, allowing one to assemble and use in minutes. Simply heat up the shaft and paddle head or handle with a hair drier or heat gun, push together and it's done! The extended T handle allows up to an extra 6" extension height.
I have both the ergo and extended T handle, both are comfortable, but the extended T will be the most versatile I feel. It allows one to have one paddle and use for racing, downwinders or surfing, simply heat the shaft and reset the T handle to the required length and you're done!
The shaft is slender and has a sharkskin feel, at first strange on the hand but is super grippy and your hand should never slip or slide off. The texture allows a looser grip on the lower hand.
So why change? The maker Bill has done an enormous amount of work in the paddle head to stop slip, wobble. I've tried almost all other paddles out there which are really all the same in profile. What these Ke Nalu's do is to slip effortlessly into the water and grip the water. There really is little or no wobble, being so light are easy to swing. The paddle enters the water with less disturbance, grabs without wobble (even with a light grip), and it releases without much disturbance or splashing.

More reviews here: www.standupzone.com/forum/index.php?topic=13448.0

Disclaimer: I paid for my paddles, have no financial gain from their sale and am happy to let others try mine. Please email me and I'll pass on the Jonathan's details.

This is what a normal paddle blade vortex looks like:



This is the Ke Nalu paddle vortex



From Bill's website: www.kenalu.com
"So you plant your real paddle and pull your board and yourself to where the paddle is planted. But when you pull, your paddle moves the water. Water in front of the paddle gets pushed in the direction of the pull. All the water on the face of the blade tries to move around the blade and the water on the back follows the paddle. The water in front flows around the edge of the paddle to the lower pressure area in the back caused by the blade moving away. the water moving forward from the back joins with this water moving sideways and back to make a whirlpool-like vortex. This general motion of water around the blade is called slip. It usually results in a vortex of spinning water on both sides of the blade.
All of this motion is wasted energy–the water moving away from the stroke, water slipping around the blade, water in the back moving towards the blade, and the vortex–all are wasted energy. Unavoidable, but still a waste. But there is a bigger problem. Momentum is mass times velocity and the momentum of the water and the momentum of the board are equal–that's how we move across the water. But the kinetic energy required to achieve that momentum is equal to the mass times the velocity squared. That square function of velocity is where we pay our penalties, if we double the mass we're increasing the velocity of we double the amount of energy required. If we double the velocity for the same mass we increase the energy required by four times. That's why we paddle with a blade instead of just a shaft–the more mass we move the less velocity we need to impart to it to provide velocity to our boards.

The bigger a blade is, the more mass it moves, the lower the velocity, and the less slip. And slip is ALL wasted energy.

The reason racers like big blades is because they slip less for the same amount of force applied and so they waste a little less energy, but like all things, there's a cost. A big blade has more leverage for asymmetrical force applied to the blade, that results in wobble and twisting. And the amount of energy a paddler can apply is about one tenth of a horsepower. The faster the board is moving, the faster you need to swing the paddle just to keep up with the board. Bigger blades are harder to swing fast and the recovery takes a higher percentage of that sorry little one tenth of a pony.

People like smaller paddles for two reasons–they can swing them faster and they wobble and vibrate less. If you're a racer (or a wanabee) you need to be able to swing as big a blade as possible because of the efficiency factor. Winning racers push their boards to slightly above hull speed, exerting far more energy for the small increment in speed than someone paddling just a little slower than hull speed. Drag is much higher for a board above hull speed so there is a rapid and substantial loss in velocity in the recovery part of the stroke. They need power and efficiency to gain back that velocity and push the board up the bow wave against drag and gravity. A paddler cruising at sub-hull speed can use a high cadence with a lot less pull to maintain their speed because they only need to add back the much smaller amount of velocity they lost during recovery, and so they can get away with a small paddle."

On Sunday five of us paddled down through Pambula Lake and down Pambula river to the Pambula river mouth..

Four Kialoa's and one Ke Nalu.. We swapped around.. It's a very nice paddle.. Here's a few pictures.. What a great day.

DJ