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Werner Powerhouse – (reincarnation for the deceased thread) 17 years 2 days ago #21336

AdrianTregoning
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This is for the thread that died. (Werner Powerhouse – carbon or fiberglass)

I replied to it and then something went wrong… So Jeroen had to kill it. Oh well. I don’t remember who that dude was but you wanted to know how the paddle felt. I hope you get this!

Well, I finally got to try out my new paddle. It was on flat water and I was in a play boat, not a creek boat. So not the ideal boat for testing a creeking/river running paddle but then again, neither is flat water the best environment either!

First off, very light, the lightest neutral bent shaft I’ve tried and paddling with the reduced swing weight is a pleasure. Zero flutter during my session but it wasn’t the most hardcore of paddles. My right shoulder soon started hurting and I resorted to watching some of my mates chase each other around while playing polo, in non-polo boats, in between messing around. The paddle is very stiff, no doubt about it. Feels good though and probably close in stiffness to my H20-Team paddle. Even though the H20’s have plastic blades, they are still quite stiff and responsive, although not as stiff as a carbon blade, of course. I will be comparing to the H20’s quite a bit as I’ve been paddling them over the last year quite a bit. The Werner Powerhouse has a clean catch and I couldn’t really fault it too much, a cleaner and quieter catch than the H20-2 blades. I spent more time on C-to-C and draw strokes and this was very smooth. Smoother than the H20’s but I guess that also has a fair amount to do with how thin the blade of the Werner in question is. It glided through the water effortlessly.

The Powerhouse is a powerful blade, of that there is no doubt. But it would almost be hard to say which has more power, the Powerhouse or the H20-2. I believe I’d need to paddle it on a river, in a creek boat, to get a better feel for this. The H20-2 is a surprisingly powerful blade. Because of shoulder issues I couldn’t put down too much power but tried twice briefly and the blades of the Werner stroked smoothly, with zero flutter. I’ve never had issues with flutter on either the H20-2 or the H20-Team. Both are great paddles.

I did find that the paddle didn’t have as much grip (in my hands) as an H20 paddle. Of course the H20 has lovely Santoprene grips that stick to ones hands like glue which are really great. But I don’t think this will be an issue; maybe on very heavily silted rivers (like our Buffalo River, and others).

The H20 blades are located onto the shaft with a sort of fin in the blade that fits into a slot cut into the shaft. This eliminates the possibility of the blade twisting around on the shaft. I hope the Werner doesn’t do this. Overall though, my first impressions are really, really good. I’m a happy man so far. I’ve seen someone creek (actually two people) with Werner Double Diamonds for a long time and the one dude broke his after four years of abuse in Australia, Uganda, Iceland, Sweden, Finland and Norway, paddling a lot, as a guide. So I guess mine should last a while… :pray: