At last my multiply-tested patience was rewarded with calm weather and even sun. My humpback wing, third revision, promises an interesting summer. I can take it on now, but still have to learn how. I ponder over it on the shore while having an excellent view on the bay. There is my laboratory and, if she's in a bit of a good mood, Dusty, my coach.
As I have swum for maaany years with about the same arched type of waterwing (albeit in ever increasing fine tunings) a comparison with the bumped wing is illuminating. But there is more. The latter turns out to have a personality of its own. Although the surface of the arched wing is larger than that of the Bumped the thrust has remained about equal, but the 'drag', the friction with the water, is clearly less. The tilting is lighter and faster, it feels as if the bumped wing has an innate drive to move ahead. When I hold still the mono I go substantially faster than with the Arch.
An unexpected result from the larger width of the Bump is that I'm more stable in the water, like a tightrope walker with his balance pole. This is particularly advantageous in wind waves as they are shorter than swell waves and therefore swim rather more turbulently.
With the arched wing my water consciousness is in my hands. With the bumped wing it seems as if a limb is added to my body with which I feel the water across the total width, especially in the tips. My manoeuvring is still somewhat clumsy. The Arch steers from the middle, the Bump from its extremities. First it needs to be tilted before it can be brought into position. This is fairly doable, except for extreme figures. The swimming in spiral to the seabed is pretty feasible, but going from horizontal to vertical, i.e. swimming sideways, is still hard to do.
With this the Bump is so wide that it partly sticks out above the water. The width is an outspoken disadvantage when swimming through the narrow 'canyons', worn out gullies between underwater flatbeds. Also swimming on my back is not flawless, as if it ever was. A definite advantage of the width is that it provides more leverage, for instance with one hand in the middle and the other at an extremity. Amongst others this is handy when I want to revolve around my axis for spotting Dusty.
Yesterday I saw a few lads roll back a washed-up pole into the water. Today the wind had moved it to the right-hand shore. Jane and I pushed off the pole and Dusty loved it. One moment I saw her hanging at the other side of the pole. I kept to my side and showed no intention to get over to her. She sank a little, turned half sideways so as not to hit the pole with her dorsal fin and came over, in my face. You see, she does come over of her own free will.
Learnt something again. That pole was an excellent opportunity to manoeuvre around. The arched wing I always had to move forward, as with a backward movement the double rubber sails were pushed apart and this resulted in a resistance that was seldom required. With the Bump this does not happen. It even goes faster backwards, but the angle is only controllable over short distances. Now I do not only want to get used to moving the bumpwing in position by a backward approach, I will also have to unlearn various forward moves. And this proves to be as hard.
PS Check out O'Pen House and let Paul take you on a virtual whale watching tour in the Sea of Cortez, Mexico. He'll take you there for real too!