As with anything new, it takes a while for everyone to really understand something, how to use it etc..
Here's my take based on my experience using the Zaveral and Burnwaters.
As long as you remember CF isn't some magic material (glorified plastic) and treat it as a tool, its useful. If not, well, i suppose it'll be just about as useful as CF on the dash of your car.
Sure you can get a weight savings by equipping a whole team, but there you could get better results just making sure everyone has the correct shaft length on whatever paddle they use.
The point of a CF blade isn't so you can have a superhumanly fast flick forward (unless you're from one of those Asian or Thailand teams
).Naturally you can recover and flick really fast if you wanted to, but that depends on your teams recovery.
To put simply, a lighter blade won't wear you out as much as a heavier one. And the weight diff. between wood and that ZRE is pretty stark. Try paddling the 2000m with lead arms after having raced in both mixed and mens races, and this becomes quite clear.
The other part, and I don't know how sensitive people are to this, but the feel for the water it gives. The Zre blade gives great feedback. Y'know, if you're doing funny things through the water like shimmying or not anchoring the blade down. If you pay attention, it lets you know.
But, let's be clear, once a blade is anchored and you have that strong pull, a blade is a blade, they all feel the same.
The Burnwater blade gave me less feedback, actually, it felt exactly like a grey owl. Exactly. Entry, pull and exit. The recovery gave a marginal difference. Just a slightly lighter weight, somewhere in-between the ZRE and Grey Owl.
Does having a CF blade in the boat really affect the outcome of a race? Of course not. Watch a race with some people using CF. No one says, "oh, they're going to win, they have CF". That'd be ridiculous (someone should pass that onto the f2000p organizers). And remember, these DBraces are only 500m's. (well, except the guts 'n glory of course)
To me, having a CF blade gives me some small advantages that I love to exploit to put out just that much more power. Is it worth it? I think so. CF blades are nothing new in paddle sports, but they're only becoming more popular in DB circles these days.
Anyways, that's my take on it.
