Distance (Touring- and Seekayakpaddle)

Slim blades offer many advantages. On the one hand, the lower torque: Both the wind and the water are offered a shorter lever arm than with wider blades. This saves forces in headwinds and improves the guiding properties when the blade is immersed.
On the other hand, you can use a narrow paddle blade to better control your own power input: for complete power transmission, the entire blade is immersed, if you want to save power, only the front blade area is used. Since waters with shallow depths are usually not to be navigated for nature conservation reasons, the slightly greater depth of immersion is generally not a problem, otherwise we recommend a shallower paddle style.

The distance paddle stands out due to its wide range of applications and easy handling. A really good review about these paddles was published by Playak. The Playak paddles were given to the author, we have not yet met Hans Heupnik personally. We greatly appreciate his thorough work and approach in preparing this review.

http://playak.com/reviews/paddles/1405-review-mergner-distance-paddle

The use of the Distance paddles in salt water is no problem and a solid workmanship goes without saying.

These pictures show the special geometry of the leaves.

The front part of the blade is designed so that the water can flow off. This way only a minimal effort is needed to position the blade in the water, it stabilizes almost by itself during immersion.
In the rear part of the blade, the slight throat at right angles to the longitudinal axis ensures that a great deal of force can be transferred to the water during further immersion.

The blades of the distance paddles are slightly in front, as you can see clearly with the help of the red marked extension of the central axis. This supports the basic stroke forward and also requires less effort to keep the blade in position in the water.

Two blade sizes