We've just landed our stock of the brightest new paddle designs around, Mitchell Blades from the UK. Made by a terrific young bloke, Lance Mitchell from Chester, England, they are a true breath of fresh air with their stunning appearance & finish, construction & design.When our demo paddles arrived in the last container of Valley boats, Rob & I wanted them to be good, because they looked so bloody good! We have had the Explorer, Poseidon & Voyager paddles out now for almost 2 months, testing them extensively to gauge their strength & to find out where we think they will fit in a market dominated by a couple of well known US brands.
Suffice to say they are definitely something different, made to much higher construction standards than most of what we have seen in the past few years, and with distinctive design characteristics that haven't previously been explored in a sea kayak specific blade.
In a nutshell, there is a traditional touring blade (the Explorer) a versatile all-rounder (the Voyager), and a real performance blade for those who want serious support in their strokes (the Poseidon). The split shafts feature Mitchell's unique Vario-S Lock - a locking system that has an integrated Allen key tightener, so hard-to-shift thread reliant locks are consigned to history. They also have an amazing 10cm length variant, so you could shift your paddle from 215cm for a long stretch at sea where you want to put on some miles, all the way back to 205cm for the extra torque & control required for a surf landing. This also means that as your paddling improves you can adjust & tweak the feather & shaft length without having to buy a new paddle, with a locking system that won't fail when you most need it (like when you're upside down, 10m from rocks, in a breaking 2m wave - ask me about it one day.....)
We have demo's for testing & more than 50 paddles in stock - let us know if you'd like to take a Mitchell Blade for a spin.
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