Canoe Trade Show Blog

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