Good point, if followed
I’ve had about 18 hours of instruction in flatwater canoeing and about two minutes of the total have been spent on sideslips. Truth. There was no testing of the students’ proficiency with a sideslip before the turning instruction began.
The only “instruction” my groups ever had was a minute before class end one day after nine hours of turning instruction. The instructor asked anyone to do a “sideslip” while we were paddling back to the landing. No one responded but me. I performed an angled dynamic draw from the front quarter. The instructor bellowed “THAT’S WRONG” and paddled away. That was the extent of the instruction.
This unhelpful experience, which your OP reminded me of, is actually what motivates my writings in this thread in small part. I later concluded that this particular instructor had sort of a mercurial personality and that there was mainly a failure of communication about terminology. He was thinking of a particular sideslip implementation, the static draw sideslip. I was thinking about “sideslip” generically and used one move that had been effective for me for decades in swift water.
Not a big issue.
I just think that in an instructional situation the student should first be focused on the generic issue and objective, the what and the why – e.g., slipping a canoe to the side – before getting to the how. The various slipping techniques should be discussed, and their pluses and minuses in both flat and moving water should be reviewed. Maybe that all happens consistently in an earlier level course, depending on the curricula of the various symposiums and courses around the country, but I don’t know.
Thank you
Being self-taught in static sideslips, I never thought of these linkages. They make sense. I’m going to try them later today.
Should work in reverse, right? – wedge into a drawing sideslip, or axle into a prying sideslip – if you have enough momentum. Which should be the case going around a bend on the Batsto.
Sounds functional as well as aesthetic on moving water.
side slips and back ferries
Although proficiency in side slips and back ferries still remains a requirement for those pursuing whitewater instructor certification with the ACA, some whitewater paddling schools (I am thinking of NOC primarily) have not included these techniques in their curricula for years.
When I inquired years ago why they were not discussed, I was told that they were not sufficiently "proactive". Indeed, now that relatively few people are paddling tandems in whitewater, and the majority of those paddling solos are in extremely short, highly-rockered play boats, it makes some sense. To move a few feet laterally in such a boat it is often as quick or quicker to spin the boat, drive it across current with a stroke or two, and spin it back downstream than it is to back ferry or side slip it.
But I have observed that the very best whitewater open boaters will still utilize these techniques. Tom Foster was the most technically proficient whitewater instructor I have taken instruction from and Tom taught side slips for use in moving water and used them. These techniques are tools in the box. Sure there are lots of times you don't want to use them but there are plenty of other times they work just fine.
As for static side slips, in whitewater the time I would most commonly use this technique is when I see a barely submerged rock in a rapid dead ahead, and there is no time to do much more than put the blade in the water. Another time is when you are approaching a narrow chute. You are properly angled, but you need to slide your boat a foot or two to one side. A third instance is when you are approaching a rather vertical drop off a ledge and you can't see the landing spot until you are very close to the brink. You can often slip over a foot or so to a more friendly landing spot without having to spin the boat right at the lip of the drop.
Back ferries are useful in those scenarios when you definitely do want to put the brakes on, and there are plenty of those moments too, like when you are moving very quickly in a direction you don't want to go. The problem with back ferries is that if you are paddling "proactively" and have good downstream momentum, slowing the boat quickly to less than downstream current speed typically takes at least 2 or 3 forceful backstrokes. For those who have not practiced back ferries, a forceful backstroke in a whitewater canoe will often tend to turn the boat 90 degrees and send the paddler off downstream abeam the current. I will usually put in one backstroke on my onside, and immediately go to the offside with a cross-back (or what some would feel is more properly called a cross-far back stroke) then return to the onside. Personally, I see more people get into trouble trying to use a back ferry in current than I do using a side slip.
The side slips and back ferries I use in whitewater are usually brief affairs used to maintain the same heading but move the boat laterally a few feet with regard to the current. If you need to move over more than a few feet it is usually quicker to spin the boat. Prying side slips, jams, wedges, or whatever you want to call them are not too useful in whitewater (for most folks) because of the risk of catching the paddle blade against a shallow rock, jamming it against the hull, and levering yourself out of the boat.
One thing that I think is important for those who are somewhat new to paddling in whitewater or current to understand is that the boat is not necessarily going to go in the direction the bow is pointed. I think everyone understands this intellectually, but since most of us are used to driving cars, we sort of develop an instinct that the craft will go where we are pointing it. A boat in current is more like an airplane in that the direction of travel is often dramatically different from the heading.
Good post Pete
All good stuff but I especially liked your observation in the last paragraph. It could be reassuring when initiating the uninitiated.
Here's an unattributed quote I came across many years ago that really spoke to me:
"The master mason reassured his young apprentice saying, 'The pain that you are feeling is the trade entering your body."
Aw Pete…
Ya mighta helped my paddling but you just pushed my fear of flying to new heights. The plane isn’t going forward!? Aaaaiiiieee…
Always enjoy your posts, and good thread overall, although I seem to be at a level in ww that I should stop thinking so much.
Yes you are!
No thinking for you! Get a really good song stuck in your head and hum your own soundtrack.
Pete: Speed, and sideslip vs. draw
"As for static side slips, in whitewater the time I would most commonly use this technique is when I see a barely submerged rock in a rapid dead ahead, and there is no time to do much more than put the blade in the water. Another time is when you are approaching a narrow chute. You are properly angled, but you need to slide your boat a foot or two to one side. A third instance is when you are approaching a rather vertical drop off a ledge and you can’t see the landing spot until you are very close to the brink. You can often slip over a foot or so to a more friendly landing spot without having to spin the boat right at the lip of the drop."
Pete, seem to be arguing for proactive forward speed in rapids.
If so, why would you use a static sideslip in any of these three situations instead of the much more proactive dynamic draw? The dynamic draw has the two advantages I have been repeating. First, it will immediately yank you sideways much more effectively and quicker than waiting for a static sideslip to take effect. Second, the draw won’t slow your forward speed like the static sideslip for whatever proactive move want to make after you have moved laterally into the position you want.
I agree with the risks of static or dynamic pries in whitewater and have never used them much myself. But I was watching an entire Bill and Paul Mason tandem video last night and, dang, Bill was an absolute wizard of the repeated pry in rocky rapids. He used the word “sideslip” repeatedly to refer to lateral moves with dynamic draws, cross draws, pries and ferries.
When I need to I do
If the situation requires using a lateral draw abeam or a sculling draw I will do so. Many times it does not. Using one technique does not preclude using the other.
Frankly, properly done a static draw side slip does not slow the canoe that much, I find. The effect of a static draw (or lack thereof) is pretty easy to judge almost immediately, and you can switch from a static draw to a sculling draw virtually instantaneously, so I really don’t understand the “one or the other” mentality.
Why use more effort than is necessary?
If you know through experience that a static draw will get you where you want to be without expending much effort, why expend more?
The folks who are reallly really good make it look so easy.
“They’re hardly doing anything at all! The water must do all the work! We should try this honey …”
Yes, use different tools as appropriate
The entire purpose of my comments in this thread has been to point out that there are multiple techniques to "sideslip" a canoe, that each technique has pluses and minuses, and that the static techniques used on flatwater may not work well or at all in certain moving water situations.
In whitewater, I was trained by national open boat slalom champions and have always been of the proactive, accelerative, technical philosophy. But that doesn't mean you move down a rapid rapidly. It means you make the individual surgical moves within the rapid with efficiency and precision -- including backwaters and explosive accelerations where necessary. When you are running a hundred yard rapid well, it could take you ten minutes or more of surgical play.
I also don't think any stroke or move is ever really "static" in whitewater. The water conditions are too chaotic, your velocity is not the same as your bow heading, and the forces you apply to the paddle are almost always instantaneously changing. The simplistic model of a gliding static sideslip on a glass duckpond is just that -- simplistic. Bring up some wind and waves, as Snowgoose presciently suggests, and the paddler will be in the whitewater-like realm of having to make instantaneous micro- or even macro-adjustments to the sideslip, all of which involve dynamic force applications onto the paddle.
Static force applications are not necessarily "less effort" than dynamic force applications on a paddle.
BTW, all my technique comments in this thread assume a solo paddler in a 13'-16' open touring canoe in moving water or rapids -- not an extremely short and highly rockered or flat bottomed WW specialty canoe, in which you can do all sorts of easy spins that you can't do in touring canoes.