Discussion: ooooh

Not only did we beat the Ali/Brendan boat, but our QR is a lot less squiggly than theirs. Nice steering! =)

I think if I'd been in the stern, I wouldn't have been able to overcome your greater strength, and we would have been doing a lot more zigging and zagging. Plus, you're heavier than me, and I think it's bad to have the front of the boat lower than the back.

We were an excellent team. With an hour or two of practice and the racing paddles, I bet we could fare especially well. Certainly we can best Team Irish Aligator with negligible effort. =P

It should be noted that I recalibrated the QR speed graph to better examine the region of interest of speed. While our slowest speed was something like 30 min/km stopping to visit the controls, under power, we ranged from 6-10 min/km.

it is tough with a weak partner, isn't it Ian?

Heavy at the back works well, though ;p

Was the lake much higher after all the rain? Did ye hit the bottom much?

It's standard to put the stronger paddler in the bow, just as the stronger cyclist (the "stoker") goes on the rear seat of a racing tandem. In fact, Aims's awesome C2 orienteering boat was designed for exactly this application, a man in the bow and a woman in the stern, for mixed races. (We use it with me in the bow, but it has been modified so that the seat positions are quite different than they were originally.)