C-Forum

Kneeling thwarts -- Who still uses them?

I picked up a Blue Hole Sunburst and it has a kneeling thwart. I have other OC1 for whitewater and plan to use the Sunburst for early spring paddles on local river to get in some paddling before heading to the whitewater rivers. So I like the idea of kneeling as it will prepare me for being in the saddle. And I'll use if for early morning and evening paddling on the local lake.

Any suggestions as to what I should add in the way of knee pads?

And I find the kneeling thwart a bit slippery.

Thanks,

If you're going to be the only paddler, then you could go ahead and carve knee cups from a 3" thick piece of minicell to be glued in with contact cement. However, if you need the outfitting to be more adaptable because it might be shared by multiple paddlers of different sizes, then there are other more flexible options worth considering.

As far as increasing friction on your kneeling thwart goes, you could consider covering it with neoprene (nylon side up) for a combination of a little padding and a less slippery surface. If you're ambitious, you can also countour the kneeling thwart with minicell before applying the neoprene (e.g. use contact cement to add hip blocks on each side that gradually taper down to the thwart).

John

We have them in a caper

I believe they saved my brothers fiance's life.

We were paddling, I in the stern, she in the bow, and she had a seizure. they kept her from falling out of the boat.

thankfully we were in slightly moving water on the nantahala, and I was able to paddle to shore pretty easily

just thought i'd share the story.

I never really liked them, for obvious entrapment issues, but they work fine, and when i was learning, i was always able to get out when i flipped, and needed to.

I have wrapped kneeling thwarts with a layer of thin neoprene as John suggested and it does add some padding and makes the thwart a bit less slippery.

If you want to remain more or less centered on the thwart, you can cut a couple of blocks of 3" thick minicell of sufficient width to act somewhat like hip pads and glue them to either side of the top of the thwart with contact cement. These will keep you from inadvertently sliding over toward the gunwale if you don't want to do that.

I made the hip blocks on my kneeling thwart adjustable (side to side) by cutting 1/4" wide slots in the thwart, and mounting the foam hip blocks to small pieces of plywood.

A 1/4-20 machine screw (pan head, so it has a smooth profile that won't grab anything) goes into the slot from the bottom, and into a T-Nut in the plywood. A Phillips screwdriver is all that is needed to adjust the width.

Thanks for the ideas.

I like the idea of glueing some thin neoprene onto the thwart.

It had never occurred to me to glue hip pads onto the thwart.

I'm sitting on the fence about knee pads because of committing to a centred position as posed to allowing for both my knees to side to one side.