note
The bow and stern paddlers are most always in synch. Also note that the bow paddler’s role is as active and important as the stern’s.
We’ll pick up on tandem shortly in a new thread. Charlie pointed out to me that this thread has become cumbersome to navigate, with 400 plus posts.
We’ll wrap this thread up soon, after a bit more discussion of reverse and cross reverse.
Getting back to reverse
The most common functional, reverse maneuvers are reverse sweeps and hard reverse Js. Either one will get you pointed in the correct direction, once you’ve exited that dead end channel or backed away from the dock.
More elegant and efficient maneuvers would be reverse axles, posts and wedges. From a functional standpoint, we’ll rule out Christies.
The mechanics of the axle or post are similar. While in reverse, throw in a hard reverse J. While heeling the boat toward (Axle) or away (Post) from your on side slice back neutrally to a placement at or slightly behind your hip. Open the leading edge (the leading edge is nor pointed toward the stern)of the blade slightly and ride the turn until you’re pointed in the desired direction. If necessary, a concluding sweep to the stern will complete the turn.
In all likelihood the boat will have stalled or nearly so by now. That’s a good thing because you will likely want to transition back to forward so simply slice toward the bow, and be on your way.
We’ll ponder this for a bit before addressing the reverse wedge.
Reverse Wedge
It’s arguable whether the reverse wedge should be included in a discussion of functional freestyle. I find it far more effective than a reverse sweep when I need to turn to my off side, after backing out of a dead end or away from the dock. It’s just another choice.
We’re already traveling in reverse. When you’re ready to make the turn, drop your control hand a bit on the last stroke. This will add a sweep component to that last reverse stroke and nudge the stern toward the off side. After completing the last stroke, slice the blade back as far as you comfortably can, placing the blade against the hull, just behind your hip. (Good torso rotation will help you reach farther back.) Turn the leading (stern)edge of the blade inward (toward the hull) just a bit while heeling a bit toward the onside. The boat should spin right around. Conclude by dropping the control hand and doing a reverse sweep, as necessary, to complete the turn.
If you keep the blade angle mild and don’t heel to much, it’s not as scary as it might at first appear. Keep your grip hand loose, just in case the blade catches on the bottom or you were too aggressive on the blade angle. Letting go of the grip should settle things down.
An ordinary, everyday manoeuvre…
Canoeists are generally comfortable with the static pry… and for functional purposes, a “wedge” is just a common variant.
With the canoe moving along in a straight line (forwards or reverse), most folk can comfortably get to a neutral placement… and can then close the face slightly (angle the leading edge of the blade towards the hull).
Get this right and we can drive the hull sideways: great - a first step towards an accomplished wedge!
Now most of us will have discovered that our attempts at an ordinary, everyday prying-sideslip can result in the boat spinning around. That ain’t hard - in fact, avoiding it can be hard!
So whether moving forwards or in reverse… we learn to do the onside wedge by getting a sideslip “wrong”: by allowing the leading stem to be turning to our off-side prior to us going for our paddle placement.
If we’re travelling backwards, it doesn’t really matter how we get our stern going away from our paddling side. If the breeze doesn’t do the job for us, pretty much any uncorrected power stroke should do the trick. In most touring craft, we don’t even need to do that: just heeling a little to our onside is often enough to initiate the turn!
Unless we want to do a very aggressive manoeuvre, we can often spin around with a delicate placement pretty much in the spot we’d use for a sideslip… but if we want to tighten the turn… we apply the force fractionally closer to the stern… and perhaps use more blade-angle.
If we run out of momentum and want to spin further, we slice the blade to the stern and use a more active stroke. The first bit is beginner-level stuff: load the blade, push away from the stern… and if that’s not enough, add a bow draw.
All we do at Level 3 is smooth all of this out… most notably by using a palm-roll to maintain power face continuity from the stern push-away to the bow-draw. Oh - and give what we’ve done a fancy name!
Difficult? No! The tandem version is something I once introduced as novice pairing’s first manoeuvre - on their first outing. Their modelling wasn’t refined… but within five minutes, they had a recognisable reverse-wedge that, for functional purposes, would actually work!
I like to travel in reverse on mild
rivers. Or mild sections. This allows me to talk face to face with other canoeists.
The downside is that a group traveling downstream has an expectation that everyone will go straightish and not make a turn in front of others…
So I need to give lots of room before executing an axle ( no eddy lines involved so it really is a flatwater turn)… That puts me facing the crowd.
The last thing I want to cause is evasive action by others that may put them in peril.
Then I find a reverse wedge, very gentle heel, very effective in returning me to a normal direction of travel.
Remember all we are talking moves attainable by many canoeists and not a select few.
Cross Reverse
Cross reverse sounds a lot more difficult than it is. In fact, some find traveling any distance in cross reverse, easier and more effective than reverse.
The “secret” to cross reverse is to rotate your entire body toward your off side. For me, this generally means that I kneel, with my butt on the seat at about a 45 deg. angle or a bit more toward the off side. My offside knee is in the offside chine and my onside knee is on the center line or a bit past it. With good torso rotation, I can easily get my shoulders parallel to the offside gunwale.
From this position, imagine yourself doing a forward stroke, or any forward quadrant maneuver, except that the stroke begins near the offside stern. In other words, once you have rotated your legs, hips and torso toward the off side, consider the offside stern to be the equivalent of the onside bow.
This is much easier to demonstrate than to explain and is one more good reason to seek out on water instruction.
Paddling in cross reverse is very powerful. When done well, your torso is fully torqued at the placement and unwinds during the stroke. If you need to travel any distance, you can face where you’re going, instead of looking back over your shoulder as you would in reverse. Once you get used to it, you can do Js, Axles, posts, wedges, side slips or christies, much as you would in the forward quadrant.
As it seems we’ve lost momentum on this thread, I won’t belabor this quadrant unless questions or comments are posted.
Interesting…
and I plan to work on this particular stroke when our waters are liquid again. Looks as if that may occur early this year.
Thank You
Thanks to all of you who contributed to or followed this thread. It received far more attention than I ever imagined it would have. To those of you who offered contrarian opinions, I thank you as well. It was often those opinions that spurred the most discussion and caused those of us who disagreed, to rethink or at least justify our viewpoints.
I hope the discussion will encourage at least a few folks to try some of these techniques and a few more to attend one one or more of the upcoming events. In any event, it was a fun project during this season of frozen water.
Shortly, I’ll introduce a new thread on Tandem Freestyle techniques. Stay tuned.
For more information about Freestyle Canoeing and any of the the upcoming events, please go to the freestyle website, www.freestylecanoeing.com
Marc Ornstein
freestyle
This is an important topic and the future of canoeing in a way. Anything that gets people to come up with creative paddle strokes and expand their repertoire is a good idea in my opinion. Often it is that one or maybe two strokes at the right time that can keep you out of trouble.
It’s been a great thread
Thanks for keeping it going. Looking forward to talking about tandem maneuvers, but glad you are starting a new thread.
I agree
I went kayaking for the first time last month. After spending hours watching YouTube videos, I thought I was ready to hit the rapids. That was a cold, wet, and miserable day. I have since fallen in love with the sport, but I wish I had read your post before my first experience. A little hands-on instruction would have gone a long way.
http://www.wetspot.net.au/kayaks