To start with I went for the red one, since the last Euro paddle I used was also a straight shaft carbon fibre. After an initial period of adjustment, I started to get the feel of the bigger high-angle blade which caught a considerable amount of water. I could see clearly the acceleration advantage of the blade, although the straight shaft wasn’t exciting me too much. What was interesting however was the ability to change the angle of the feather, since the split paddles had a unique easy adjusting mechanism allowing many different feather angles. I experimented with various settings (including no angle) before settling on 30 degrees.