Archive for July, 2008

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How to Paddle a Canoe - The Sweep Stroke

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admin
on July 18, 2008
in Canoe How To, Canoeing Tips and how to paddle
. 0 Comments

 The Sweep Stroke
by Red Rock Store

This is the stroke I’m going to cal l# 2.5 with #1 being the J Stroke and #2 being the Draw Stroke.

This stroke is more helpful to the stern paddler if the bow paddler actually knows how to sweep right or sweep left. Critical to this stroke is the hand placement, namely how far you slide the paddle out for leverage and the depth of the paddle blade.

This stroke was impossible to photograph with my digital camera, but at least I can describe and show what it’s supposed to look like.

The end result of a Sweep Stroke is to push the bow away from the paddle and pull the stern towards the paddle. As you’ll see in the Sweep Stroke Paddling Instruction Pictures, I would be causing the stern of the canoe to be dragged towards the paddle.

As a stern paddler in a fierce wind, I would request a sweep left or sweep right from my bow paddler to force the bow the direction that I wanted to go. Also, in conjunction with my bow paddler who is sweeping on the the right, I would do a hard J Stroke on the left at the stern. This would cause the canoe to turn to the left quickly and with good power.

Because the Sweep Stroke only dunks half the paddle blade at an angle in the water and more or less “sweeps” with a large arc (accompanied by splashing sounds of water getting shoved out of the way of the paddle as it skims on top), the bow paddler may need to perform several fast sweeps. This is possible to do because the paddle is not deep in the water like with a regular stroke.

Learn the rest of the details and view the pictures on How to Paddle a Canoe - The Sweep Stroke

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How to Paddle a Canoe - The J-Stroke

Published
by
admin
on July 10, 2008
in Canoe How To and Canoeing Tips
. 0 Comments

With all the “How to paddle a Canoe” books out there, I’ve decided that they really don’t hit the spot when it comes down to teaching somebody how to handle a canoe on flat water(AKA lake, pond, slow moving river).

We don’t want to learn how to paddle in whitewater, not in screaming rivers or 5 foot waves, just on a lake - basic paddling techniques to allow one to go from point A to B in a straight line.

You can’t find this easily in any books or at least I can’t. Most paddling books have so much extra info including advanced techniques (cross bow rudder, post and draw, blah, blah blah) that I think the gentle reader walks away from all that worthless learning a bit dazed and confused.

So, this is my attempt to illustrate the TWO basic strokes that make a canoe go -

  1. a J Stroke and

  2. a Draw Stoke.

There are lots of variations on these two strokes that tend to be explained ad nauseum in most canoe books, but I think everybody makes them a lot harder that they really are. Oh, and yes, I know there are several folks out there who have their own personal interpretation of the J-Stroke and they do all sorts of goofy things that ARE NOT the J-Stroke.

For a proper, efficient and smooth J-Stroke, the top hand on the palm grip of the paddle ALWAYS ends in thumb-down position at end of the stroke - not thumb up, not thumb sideways, or any other derivation of the thumb. It’s thumb-down and push out with bottom arm, nothing else.

Avoid the goofy variations your buddy developed in Nam, stick to the basics and remember this one simple fact: the canoe is steered from one side at a time by either pushing the stern to the right (J-Stroke) or pulling the stern to the left (Draw Stroke) and vice versa on the other side.

Get all the details about How to Paddle a Canoe - The J-Stroke
by Red Rock Store

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