{"id":8255,"date":"2018-06-05T22:25:58","date_gmt":"2018-06-05T20:25:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/onmytodd.org\/?p=8255"},"modified":"2018-12-17T10:22:54","modified_gmt":"2018-12-17T09:22:54","slug":"introducing-lutske","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/onmytodd.org\/?p=8255","title":{"rendered":"Introducing Lutske"},"content":{"rendered":"

After a few days of sailing on the Baltic Sea I spent a night in the German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. I had Lutske with me, an inflatable Stand-Up Paddle board and new tender to Balkonia<\/a>, and wanted to try and see how she would perform on some ‘long-distance’ paddling with light luggage.<\/p>\n

I had picked a short canal between the towns of B\u00fctzow and G\u00fcstrow, aptly named the B\u00fctzow-G\u00fcstrow-Kanal<\/em>, for the trial. The canal was built as part of a larger route between Berlin and the Baltic Sea at the end of the 19th century, which was – unfortunately – never finished. It is only 14 km long. The stretch I had picked for paddling was even shorter: 10km from B\u00fctzow to the historical draw bridge near L\u00fcssow.<\/p>\n

The canal is beautifully located and quiet. The weather was amazing. Lutske performed well. However, being new at SUP paddling, I certainly didn’t manage to release her full potential.<\/p>\n

After 5.5 km the canal started to be quite infested with weeds which the aft fin got entangled in and subsequently slowed me down a lot. I removed it from the board. This helped with speed but not with directional stability. The experiment ended after 6 km and approx. 2 hours. In my defense, this included a few photo stops as well as two portages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n