Dolphin Address
October 3, 2003
Swimming with only a waterwing is of no use. The wing needs a flying start. You don't drive a car from the third gear either. Thus you can compare flippers with the second gear, but the waterwing is of best avail when it is powered by a monofin.
This becomes apparent when you only move the waterwing. With bare feet you hardly advance, but with a monofin held immobile you do so reasonably well. You can feel the water drive in turn against the upper or the under side.
The wing must be pushed down and heaved, steep and deep, to find enough propulsion. When the monofin is brought into motion, the tilt angle of the wing, as well as the deflection, should be reduced, because otherwise resistance will outgrow the issue.
The cycle of 'power snorkeling' consists of the nearly simultaneous downward movement of wing and fin, followed by the nearly simultaneous upward movement of both. When the wing is moved down, water is pushed backward and you glide into slightly deeper water as the wing is tilted downward. At the next heaving of the meanwhile up tilted wing you glide slightly upwards to the surface. Between the pushing down and the heaving there is a fluent turn. This does not go for the changeover from 'heaving' to 'pushing'.
I rise a little from the water and my return runs into the inertia of the water to absorb my body volume.
Under water this delay does not operate. Still, at the same spot, a hole kept falling in the continuity of the cycle. I have tried to counter this by the high powered pushing of fin and wing against each other in minimal deflection in order to keep a speed 'grip' on the water. This is mainly hard work and beside my interest to seek unity with water.
In the past 13 years the waterwing has made quite a progression. It all started with a hydrodynamic plank and grew into an accomplished, organically shaped swim oar, that holds three functions: the pushing away of water, the push-off for the monofin (and vice versa) and the maneuvering. Of course the breaking-point mentioned above has taken my continuous attention. I even experimented with dorsal fins, but though these had a positive effect on the letting go of the surface, they did not improve the flow between the up- and the down-stroke.
At last I have found the courage to leave the self-beaten path with a structural change in the waterwing. The result has overwhelmed me. The water has attained a new dimension, the one so smoothly imagined, yet so hard to capture: that of unhindered passage. In 1995 I wrote about the whale's fluke:
'Than the fluke becomes a very large hand
with a thousand fingers on the water.'
That is exactly what has happened. With the new wing I have total feeling with the water. Because of that, the effect of the monofin has improved substantially. For many years now I have been advised to market the waterwing, but practical drawbacks have always kept me from trying. Also I am a compulsive perfectionist. That has been solved now. Soon you can expect a film on which I demonstrate the new wing. If you are interested I would like to know:
info@janploeg.nl
Jan Ploeg, Berlin, October 3rd 2003
print version