"(PeteCresswell)" wrote in message
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If I understood it correctly, the rationale was that if one's body is
twisting
properly with each stroke, the blades just come down into the water at the
proper angle without having to rotate the control hand back and forth.

I'm coming from flat paddles because of wrist tendonitis years back. Was
paddling some offset other than 45, switched to flat, and my wrist
troubles
seemed to go away coincident with that - understanding, of course, that
correlation does not equal causation....

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I don't feather my paddle at all any more. It only took paddling in a decent
storm with beam winds to quickly understand what Dowd was saying about the
disadvantage of feathered paddles. Not only do they increase injury, winds
coming from the side gets under the paddle and can, I learned, catch enough
air to capsize the boat.

Frankly, I have no idea if 45 degrees is better than 30 or 80, nor do I
care. An unfeathered paddle eliminates any concern of using a control hand
and twisting the wrist. I don't know whether anyone has done injury
statistics on feathered/unfeathered, but I won't go back to a feathered
paddle. The only drawback was having to relearn the screw roll so that I
didn't twist the paddle on the sweep.

Rick