Featherweight by Ivan Lawler

Accessories Feather Weight Miscellaneous

Innovation doesn’t come along too frequently in our sport which is why I am very excited to introduce my new patented Featherweight.

What is a Featherweight?
The Featherweight is a simple bolt-on addition that counteracts the torque in the shaft created by the inherent imbalance of all wing paddles. It is made up of a clamp, stem and weight and can be adjusted to balance any paddle. A Featherweight will work with any blade offset, from zero to ninety degrees and for any shape and size blade. Once it is set up for your specific paddle the clamp remains fixed to the shaft while the weight and rod can be removed for easy transport in paddle bags.

The Featherweight is made in the UK with the best quality materials available. We currently have two sizes available for 29mm and 28mm paddle shafts.

How was the Featherweight conceived?
I came up with the idea of the Featherweight when I was testing a paddle from Holland, which not only cranked the blades back but also offset them so they followed further behind the users hand when the blade was immersed. The paddle felt great in the water but the added imbalance from the new design created a very heavy feel in the air. Because the water feel was so good I was motivated to try to find a way to counteract the torque on the paddle shaft. The Featherweight was born and the change in feel was so dramatic that I thought I would try the unit on my regular paddle. It immediately felt like a game changer. Despite the added weight, the paddle felt considerably lighter in use and the decision to go ahead and tidy up the design was an easy one.

The development time has been close to two years and I have been using a unit throughout that time and can honestly say I really would not want to use a paddle without one.

The video explaining the concept can be found here.

Who is the Featherweight for?
All paddlers can benefit from a Featherweight. Whether you are racing to extreme fatigue in sprints, to exhaustion in marathon or just want less stress on your recreational paddle the Featherweight will benefit you by taking away some of the load on your arms. For sprinters and marathon paddlers, this will reduce your fatigue at the end of a race. For paddlers with sore wrists, elbows or shoulders, the Featherweight has already been proven to reduce and even eliminate wrist, elbow and shoulder pain in several paddlers. As an osteopath, I am well aware that there are many causes of pain, and not all will be eliminated by using Featherweight. However for paddling related symptoms I am confident many of these will be reduced.

For those in the British racing community, probably the best endorsement for the Featherweight has come from Roland, in his own words…”It’s a no brainer, everybody needs one!” If you don’t know how significant that is then you will just have to take my word for it, give one a try and you will never look back.