sideslip, by far
I paddle on tidewater without benefit of car, so I often find myself paddling against the current. I hug the shore, and that is most effectively done with a sideslip.
Distant second is an axle. I sometimes have a need for a more aggressive turn, but I usually don’t have the courage to use a post. I love to post on perfectly calm water, but as soon as there is even a little wave action, I feel unsteady.
Generalizing that into a question: Which freestyle maneuvers work well in not-quite-flat water? Which can be adapted to do so, perhaps by not doing them very aggressively? That is, which give a lot of benefit with just a little lean? I’m talking about 6-inch to 18-inch waves, tip to trough, not genuine big water.
Finally, on the length of this thread: I was away for a couple of weeks, and I now find that, in order to catch up, I have to wade through 150 posts. It would be less daunting, and maybe more valuable for future reference, if it were chopped into single-topic threads. Probably too late for this one, so take it as a request for next time.
Oh, my boat is a Placid Boatworks RapidFire, rigged for kneeling, 15’ x 28", skegged stern, too small for my 220 pounds according to the “authorities,” not an ideal freestyle boat.
Mark
Depending on the wave direction a
maneuver that has a brace…
For example a wave that you are turning broadside to has the ability to flip. If you do a bracing type of turn on that wave with the heel toward the wave you will be the most secure… heel away from the wave more likely to windowshade you.
Good question… I often practice FS and it doesn’t take more than five minutes before powerboats come out and generate waves…there go most of my manuevers.
I am particularly uncomfy with any wedge as the boat bobs up and down often two or three feet. Since you are a big guy for the RF your head doesn’t have as much room before the Out of Bounds signal goes off. Thats just something you have to be mindful of.
Paddling and turning in waves
In an open canoe, I prefer to heel and brace away from standing waves on rivers and wind waves on lakes. This entails paddling on the down-wave side of the canoe, which further entails being bilaterally competent with a single blade.
I might brace and heel into dumping surf waves in a seakayak. I say “might” because I am more likely to be sitting on shore under an Egyptian cotton tarp sipping chamomile tea rather than paddling in such conditions.
If you are trying to turn into the wind and waves, pitching the bow downward with a forward weight shift will help in two ways. It will move the boat’s center of gravity forward so the bow will naturally weather vane into the wind, plus it will sharpen the turn by enhancing the stern skid.
Turning away from the wind and waves in a solo canoe would, in contrast, be enhanced by shifting your weight astern. This, however, is usually thwarted by the presence of a fixed seat.
All solo canoes should have quickly-removable sliding seats that can be adjusted on the fly to facilitate paddling in wind and waves. It is shameful, and probably should be unconstitutional, for an elementary and elemental paddle craft to be priced over $2000 without having the basic tool to shift weight and pitch ends.
Weight shift
While coming up on one’s knees is the quick, reliable and obvious way to shift weight forward, there is another option that is almost available and allows a weight shift toward the stern as well. It’s called a day pack or dry bag with similar contents.
It’s hard to imagine too many scenarios where I might be paddling in such wind/wave conditions sans such a pack. I usually keep mine tethered on a short length of para. cord. I can easily shove it forward or at as necessary to adjust pitch. Five or six pounds as far forward as possible in either stem is generally sufficient.
Marc Ornstein
a paddlecraft is a paddlecraft
"I might brace and heel into dumping surf waves in a seakayak. "
So also in a canoe…the other brace is called an airbrace. Brings back fond memories of a pal of mine that shot by breaking the speed limit legal for paddlecraft and braced down wave instead of on the oncoming wave.
We then had to pluck his sorry butt. As the Coasties watched!
More on weight shift and wave bracing
Moving a 5 lb. pack to the bow or stern will have a lot less effect with a 250 lb. paddler than a 100 lb. paddler.
Another consideration is that weighting the bow or stern will reduce end buoyancy moreso than shifting your amidships body slightly fore or aft. In an open canoe it’s usually better to have end lift over waves than cut through. The contrary may be preferred in a decked boat.
My oldest solution for weight shifting is to remove the solo seat and to kneel or sit on three rectangular cushions. I can slide them instantly fore or aft, and I can change the height by adding or subtracting cushions. Plus, you have three PFD’s floating in the water next to you if you dump.
Back to paddling in beam or diagonal waves in an open canoe. You heel the bottom of the hull into the wave with a J-lean to deflect water from entering over the gunwales. Paddling on the downwave side, you brace with a forward stroke as you heel the hull bottom into the wave. Forward strokes provide much stronger bracing than static braces for many reasons–one being to keep forward motion and headway, which increase dynamic stability. You can pause the forward stroke and maintain stability in beam or diagonal waves with slight draw pressure on the high brace.
Paddling in these conditions uses the elements of a FS axle: learning the best paddle placement to turn the boat (or not); learning how far and when to heel; and learning to feel how the changing pressures on the paddle will translate through your arms, seat and legs to control the movement of the canoe.
loose lips sink ships
loose hips ensure the up side stays up.
I think we’ve gotten way off target
for this thread. (Freestyle Instructional Thread) I’m partly to blame for entering into the fray.
Marc Ornstein
Part 2 if needed
its getting painful to scroll.
For whitewater
Duffeks and cross Duffeks (axles if you prefer).
Sideslips using static draws and static cross-draws, or sculling draws and cross-draws. Static pries or sculling pries are nice if you are good and eliminate the need to cross-over to move abeam to your offside, but I am clumsy with them and they entail greater risk of jamming your paddle on an unseen obstruction and taking a swim.
Reverse sweeping low brace to a Duffek. You can call it a Christie.
Wedges or “jams” are very tricky for me and entail a high risk of swimming when paddling in shallow, rocky streams.
Posts and cross-posts make for a very snappy eddy turn and are very useful for guys paddling OC-1 slalom, but for general whitewater paddling, even in very technical stuff, they aren’t necessary and require a very fine sense of balance and timing, and excellent ability to judge the effect that the eddy line you are crossing will have on the boat.
thanks for providing the ww equivalents!
Much appreciated Pete. I quickly get lost in all the nomenclature.
270 now - might as well keep going…
until we hit 300.
Surprised, and not surprised
I’m not surprised that everyone mentioned sideslips, but I am surprised at the number of people who mentioned the wedge. Its just not a move that I use, or see other people using. Guess I need to practice it some more.
Many Do, More Will.
Most delta shaped sit and switch solos are offered with a slider option; Clipper, GRE, Sawyer, Savage, Wenonah all have slider seats available. This is in part because long, fine bows are trim sensitive and partly because it's pretty easy to install slider rails on pedestal seating. I'm kinda partial to Placid's elegant new slider, but kneeling with any pedestal places the calves alongside the pedestal and tends to capture the paddler's heels under the seat edge.
Workable, probably, one imagines most will be able to swim free if capsized, but it is very difficult to slip a foot free and extend it for fatigue relief or to pitch the bow down to enhance a carve or skid.
Kneeling boats require a more complex slider, as in more complicated, heavier, etc, but Swift offers one, and BlackHawk, Curtis, Lotus and Mad River have done so in the past. The issue is maintaining room for foot space under the seat. Kneeling sliders have usually been in the form of long, parallel tracks dropped from the rails. The length is always excessive because the forward drop point must near the front thwart to be parallel to each other, and the length also requires a pretty stout board to minimize flex and breakage.
Side pods as used by Lotus and BlackHawk have the disadvantage of needing two precision molds to fit the hull. Lotus's adjustment, drilled wooden track with nylon pegs was fragile. BlackHawks friction adjustment required constant attention as heat changed the size and stiffness of the rubber pad. So it goes.
Of interest, Colden is in the final tooling stages for tracked side pods with a positive adjustment system. One hopes Glenn will be satisfied.
Knee Steering
A use for FS theory I enjoy is knee steering down twisty, Pine barrenesque streams. By heeling to either side, one can control a paddlecraft via current on the stern planes of the hull; carving turns with no forward momentum.
For a left turn, one heels left, increasing stern deflection to the right. Etc, Etc…
knee steering
works very well to maintain direction when front surfing waves on whitewater.
Although most WW paddlers would probably call it “edge control”.
Professor Wilson, please help us
understand why this works. By “without forward momentum” I assume you mean essentially drifting. If my understanding is correct (boat speed and water speed essentially the same)I would think that healing would have a negligible effect. I’m confused. (No jokes about that please.)
Marc Ornstein
I will join you in the dunce corner Marc
Upstream or on flatwater under power it seems that knee steering heeling to the outside of the turn works very well. Right turn left heel and vice versa.
But downstream…if you are going with the current, there isn’t any speed differential and the boat just rocks back and forth…at least to me.
This always confuses me
Heal left, turn right?
just like skiing
when you do that on flatwater it causes the boat to carve a turn…I visualize the bow wave pushing on more of the forefoot of the boat and the bow being at an angle…the turn accentuated.
So in skiing and canoeing steer with your knees…(thats how it used to be in skiing…maybe now with your feet)