Agreed - when you think about the reasons for doing a back ferry:
Slow down momentum to see what is ahead or let someone get out of the way
Move laterally to avoid a hazard or line up on a shoot
Back set into an eddy
I’d say a back ferry is the best alternative for items 1 or 2, and the ramifications for blowing it are (hopefully) less sever than the alternatives. Back setting into an eddy is no easy task. Never mind trying to set the angle, between the downstream current, the eddy line and the upstream current in the eddy, it also really challenging to know which way the boat needs to lean. Even with a load, I think you are better off doing an eddy turn than trying to back set.
True, we could only successfully pull it of in faster currents at the end of a week long practicing during a river trip
and start all over againg with the next trip, because we just didn’t have whitewater nearby to practice it regularly.
So how do you lean - you are going into the eddy stern first, so I would think you would have to have the boat leaned away from the eddy. Once the bow crosses you flatten it?
One way to learn to do this is with a a forward ferry in an easy current and eddy, so you get the idea with more control.
You must have had enough room to turn around for this move in advance of course.
You have to heel the canoe upstream relative to the main current, or downstream relative to the eddy current, exactly as you would if you are entering the eddy from a forward ferry. The boat won’t turn until the pivot point has crossed the eddy line and you don’t relax the heel until the boat stops turning, all the same as for a normal eddy turn out of current.
Unfortunately, this requires some degree of being able to think “backwards” just as is needed when one gets turned around while running a rapid, something I was never worth a darn at.
hey there are times I absolutely backset into an eddy in a kayak. It usually involves me following someone who is running a drop ahead of me and wanting to watch them without having to look over my shoulder or turn my back to them. It also buys a little time for spacing between boats. If you do the traditional eddy turn you might miss them paddling over or out of the base of the drop. Nobody wants to paddle in on top of somebody else. Sometimes I purposefully kill my momentum in ww by purposefully hitting holes a bit soft or not paddling much between key moves. Those in between moments usually involve a downstream ferry angle after the hole and drifting just a bit. It gives you time to spin the boat on a new vector. At the top of double z rapid (New River) you begin with the scary ferry (upstream) then line up for a small drop and hole. I purposefully hit that hole slowly with my stern pointing away from the bulk of the current because I don’t want the current to push me out to the center where chair hole and table rock await. I will need time to adjust my angle for a diagonal wave. Also in really tight spots speed is not your friend. Not everything is “wham bam thank you mam” in ww kayaking. While the strokes didn’t really cross over when I switched from c1ing to kayaking, the awareness of the bow and stern in the current did carry over. There’s a small drop I do regularly on the upper new that I drift into on a downstream ferry angle which moves me laterally across the top of drop. It helps to line up the drop with very few strokes or without having to spin the boat. Even on big powerful rivers in decked boats there are opportunities to use down stream ferry angles.
Back setting (setting) into a bank eddy at the inside of a river bend (or just after the bend) is not too difficult, I find. It allows you a good downstream view of the river that you couldn’t see around the bend so that you can plan your line.
Paddling whitewater these days I usually find momentary back ferries to be more useful than long back ferries. They allow you to move the canoe laterally a foot or two to more precisely line up for a narrow chute (to give an example) while still maintaining the same downstream attitude of the boat.
So as you are crossing the current diagonally toward the eddy the boat is leaned (healed/edged) upstream (away from the eddy). That might seem counter intuitive to people - it does to me, but i know it is right. As the boat crosses the eddy line, it would then have a downstream lean relative to the eddy current.
I think back to this eddy - huge shore eddy with surprising fast moving water out in the main current and in the eddy.
Pretty easy place to do an eddy turn, although this guy didn’t have quite enough lean and took a swim. It would be much harder to do a back set into this eddy. First you have to set the angle so that you actually cross the eddy line into the eddy. And then you need to have the boat leaned upstream, away from the eddy so you don’t dump on the way in. Just doesn’t seem easier to me.
One of the things I learned the hard way in a long boat (Whitesell Piranha) during an attempt to eddy out at the top of the first rapid on the Nantahala (Patton’s Run) was the need to hold your heel or boat lean until the boat had completely stopped turning. That was the first time I had paddled that particular canoe.
I hit the eddy perfectly, high and crossing the eddy line at close to a 90 degree angle. But I relaxed my heel too soon and dumped toward the inside of the eddy. Looking forward it looked to me as if the bow had pretty nearly stopped turning but the long stern was still swinging into the eddy with some momentum.
Yes, the boat heel required to set into an eddy from current seems very counter-intuitive to me as well.
so the quality of the video posted below is pretty low grade- I shot it 30- 35 years ago with vhs and without any image stabilization over multiple days, mostly of double z,
at 5:09 check out the loaded oar frames back ferrying, all this footage is shot from the middle of the rapid (from top to bottom) on river right, so you can’t really see the upstream “scary ferry” that leads into this class IV rapid. The first raft at the very beginning of the video has the right idea with a short back ferry but they do it with the stern pointed in the wrong direction. They adjust with a real short 2nd back ferry around chair hole and just give one person an out of boat experience. The swimmers you see in the video mostly get too far center because they overpowered the drop after the scary ferry and didn’t backferry or ferried the wrong direction. In one case, the angle was bad on the diagonal wave. Complex rapids combine complex solutions and moves. What was 20 years ago is now 30-35 years ago!
a lot of back ferrying going on in general, my way of thinking is that slowing a boat down is pretty important!
The sea kayak trip that I was going to do yesterday got cancelled, so I went out to my local park-and-play spot to practice back ferries and back sets in my Yellowstone Solo.
I found some easy current and did some back ferries using a back sweep and cross back stroke. Once you get the angle set is not too hard. It is something that I do anyway just to pause the boat in the current and see what is downstream. I didn’t try the reverse J-stroke – kind of forgot about it. It’s too hard to do in my whitewater boat, but I probably could have done it in my Yellowstone Solo.
Then I found an easy eddy to do an eddy turn and back set.
Not my best paddling. It was an awkward, off side eddy turn (angle was a little tight), but it got me where I needed to be. For the back set, getting the angle set was the hard part. This was pretty easy current, and even there it took me a little while to get the angle. In faster water, I could see getting blown right past the eddy before you get the angle set. Might be a little easier for tandem partners who have practiced it.
After my little experiment I am still of the opinion that even with a load, you would be better off doing an eddy turn than trying to do a back set.
Indeed.
While the word ferrying* somehow can suggest that this is only a technique to cross a river, it is also a technique to move you a bit to the left or righ or stay in place on a river while avoiding going downstream (as much as possible).
Also ferrying can for example be used to pass a sharp bend in a river to avoid being swept to the outside of the bend, as is shown here:
Might be a little easier for tandem partners who have practiced it.
I am sure it is easier when paddling tandem.
* in the Dutch language “ferrying” is called “traverseren”.
Its funny - there are how to videos on YouTube for just about everything, but I searched for “back ferry solo canoe” and this is all I found.
Whitewater boat, so I’m not sure how relevant it is to this discussion, but this guy has it down. It also led me down the rabbit hole of watching other cool whitewater videos…
I actually thought about loading up a couple of bags with gear to make it more realistic, but decided that was over kill. End of the day I don’t know that it would have made that much of a difference. I remember from a previous post that your tripping boat is an Old Town Cascade. I went looking for the specs but couldn’t find them. I guess you just need to get out and try it and see what works for you. Either approach would work as long as you have practiced it.
Same here, I have been looking for good videos about ferrying, but most of them are only about short ferries with the help of standing waves. Others are just not very clear when taken from the side instead from above, so not very helpfull.
Looking at the back ferry in the video you presented, I just wonder if back ferrying in a whitewater canoe is possibly more difficult than with a touring canoe?
I don’t know much about real whitewater canoes, except that I did not like the ones I tried briefly, except the Old Town H2Pro – but that says more about me than about the boat I quess. Most of my whitewater experience has been with the Dagger Legend, Interlude and Reflection 15 (solo), Old Town Appalachian, 158, Penobscot 15 and a little bit with a Swift Kipawa. But in general I don’t really like whitewater and it always has been more an obstacle during my trips. If I would have the ambition to paddle whitewater rivers solo, I would probably have bought a Swift Raven whitewater-touring canoe.
