Racing/speed tests/ random pics!!

Well Race season has been going well so far up to this point. It is crazy how much the race scene has grown over the past 5 years. There are races withing driving distance from Annapolis almost every weekend. NY and NJ are starting to host a lot of races along with DE and VA. Team rider Denny Grant just took 1st place at the Paddle for Humanity in NY a few weeks ago in fact! If your willing to drive you can find a race.

Speaking of racing, this week was our Tuesday night race training group. We had a decent turnout and everyone was on a race board (non race boards are still welcome :), it was pretty cool to see. Spa Creek was also packed with sup paddlers, 5 years ago you would be lucky to see another person on a paddle board, we were the minority to kayaks. BOY has that changed! Now kayaks are hard to find, and no offense to kayakers but why would you want to sit down and paddle when you can stand?? haha

Also just some food for thought. Team Rider Denny Grant and a Local PHD Math wiz David Shames did some speed test/analysis on a few different boards. They tested an Infinity, Grant custom (Denny's new design), a Bark Dominator, and  Starboard Coast Runner. Denny paddled them all in the same conditions back to back. Looks like the Infinity came out on top, Denny's board in 2nd (His first design, which is impressive), followed by the Bark and the Starboard. Here is what David had to say about it

"I finished the analysis since I knew I would never get it done during the week. Attached is a spreadsheet where you can play around with the numbers or redraw the curves. What I try to do in order to compare deceleration curves is to stagger the start times of the runs for each boat so that they all end up at the same low speed at the same time. That's just one way to do it. You can see what I mean from the graph and from looking at the spreadsheet. I then look for the lowest slope at the speeds of interest, which is the least deceleration.

The methodology includes some redundancy and self-correction, and has a reasonably tight margin of error in determining time/position points, even though the data points don't fit on a smooth curve. Remember that resistance is has several oscillating mathematical terms so you tend to see the observed points winding around a curve. Also, the wind, waves, and rocking the board can all affect the instantaneous speeds.

Discounting the wind, which was definitely a factor, the Infinity takes the lead, with your boat second. (That corresponds to the sprint tests results where the Infinity seemed to decelerate a little less.) The Coast runner and Dominator were about even, but the Coast runner entered the test zone at a much lower speed (which itself is telling) so we can't compare its higher speed performance. In my earlier tests, the Dominator is a bit faster, as you would expect."

If your interested in learning more about the tests or want more info on it send us an email info@supannapolis.com


Thanks
Sup Annapolis

 
Some Random pictures we have taken over the past couple weeks since the last blog post