I never "got" tumblehome

Well, I think I am up to over 20 different canoes I own currently and there have been others I have sold. In addition, I have paddled over a hundred other designs (including the Swift Osprey), and at least three quarters have been solo boats of a very wide variety of hull designs.

I can tell you that I could get the great majority of solo boats that I have paddled to carve an inside circle. Some very straight-keeled boats can be pretty resistant however. But to do so requires a paddle technique that is somewhat foreign to many touring paddlers requiring the paddler’s weight to be well-forward to unweight the stern, requiring a shorter stroke placed farther forward than most recreational paddlers use, and a fairly high stroke cadence so that the boat does not lose momentum between strokes.

Per Andrew Westwood, there are four elements used to modify the radius of a canoe paddled on an inside circle. This is the “4” of the “2x4” technique. The “2” refers to the two strokes used, namely forward and cross-forward. The four modifiers are as follows:

Stroke timing or cadence. A faster stroke cadence will tend to straighten out (increase the radius) of the circle.

Stroke placement and excursion. A shorter stroke planted further forward tends to tighten the circle. A stroke carried further back toward the hip will straighten it.

Paddle shaft angle. A very vertical paddle shaft will promote a tight circle. Angling the paddle shaft outward and introducing a subtle element of a forward sweep will straighten it.

Boat heel. More heel to the on-side promotes a tight circle of short radius. Flattening the boat straightens the circle.

http://www.rapidmedia.com/rapid/categories/skills/5857-open-cane-technique-power-steering

@pblanc said:
[…]
http://www.rapidmedia.com/rapid/categories/skills/5857-open-cane-technique-power-steering
This technique is more targeted at whitewater paddling in a whitewater canoe than covering distances with a touring canoe. And while “paddling an inside circle” is indeed a very good way to learn to paddle straight, you won’t get very far with it unless the circle is indeed very big (as Tom Foster told me) . Also I have yet to see a video with someone doing it sitting in a touring canoe with a bent-shaft paddle.

Well, I don’t have a video but I do it all the time in touring canoes with a bent shaft paddle. It is not necessarily the most relaxing way to paddle since it requires continual focus on technique and an awareness of when the boat is about to fall off the circle to the off-side so that the appropriate modifications can be made to maintain the circle.

I will not infrequently use this technique when paddling hit and switch with a bent shaft paddle to reduce the frequency of the switches that would otherwise be required. By getting the hull to carve just a bit I find that I can often get a dozen or more strokes in on a side rather than 5 or 6 while still maintaining a nearly straight course through the water.

And yes, I had instruction with Tom Foster as well.

@pblanc said:
Well, I don’t have a video […]
That is too bad, I hoped there were some that had escaped my attention.
Probably touring canoeing is not interesting enough to make that kind of videos about?
Only when whitewater is added, it gets some footage, like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmsExeth-08

I don’t know how many times I’ve been shown that video as an example of whitewater (usually by those who claim the Rendezvous is a whitewater canoe). But that ain’t whitewater. Adding frothy soap bubbles doesn’t make it whitewater. :wink:

Not the best example of inside circle, and not a bent shaft - but I like how this shows the bow wave pinning…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFMz41x_KfU

As it relates to the OP - tumblehome gets the paddle closer to the centerline (however you hold it) with this technique…and any other power stroke that is done with onside heel.

I’m out of this discussion. I’ll do it in person.
I’m currently in Iceland

So - rereading posts by canonymous, I now see that his point is (to me) that if one can’t get the paddle vertical and needs to have the boat level…with tumblehome, the blade is slightly closer to the centerline. I’ll buy that. Not a cure, but an aid - and that’s just one benefit.

@Steve_in_Idaho said:
So - rereading posts by canonymous, I now see that his point is (to me) that if one can’t get the paddle vertical and needs to have the boat level…with tumblehome, the blade is slightly closer to the centerline. I’ll buy that. Not a cure, but an aid - and that’s just one benefit.
That is indeed what I meant to say, although my wording in the beginning was possibly not clear. Also the drawing needs some studying to understand, and a larger version may have been better showing the subtle differences? For me it is more clear as I can enlarge it and rotate all elements to study the extreme possiblities. An animated picture would perhaps be better, but I do not have the drawing application anymore to easily make one.

@kayamedic said:
I’m out of this discussion. I’ll do it in person.
I’m currently in Iceland
Iceland is ‘halfway’ to the Netherlands, where I live, but still too far to meet :wink:

@canonymous said:
When paddling in a solo canoe, I try to avoid an onside heel, because that can give a canoe a tendency to turn to your off-side, with the result that you need even stronger correction strokes to go straight.

As a river paddler, I rarely do an offside heal - it can be a recipe for disaster crossing eddy lines, and I have never noticed my boats respond that way. I think of the offside heal for freestyle, or turning in sea kayaks more than canoes, but I don’t paddle long straight lake cruisers.

@pblanc said:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrWYLTEWkyw

While this technique is especially applicable to short, highly-rockered hulls with a sharp chine, it will work even with much longer, less rockered hulls with a shallow arch cross-sectional contour.

I can carve circles and do figure 8’s easily in my old school WW boat - Dagger Encore. It is much more difficult to get my flatwater boats (Yellowstone Solo and Wildfire) to carve a circle, but the technique still works. If the boat is turing to the onside, you need to be paddling on the onside. If the boat is turning to the offside, you need to be paddling on the offside (cross forward rather than switching sides).

@canonymous said:
Only when whitewater is added, it gets some footage, like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmsExeth-08

Switching sides and using a bent shaft - this is the opposite of cab forward paddling. Have to agree with Steve - although he is pretty good at getting in and out of eddies, I never thought this video was a particularly good example of whitewater paddling,

Some decent examples of cab forward paddling here (ignore the kayaks)
https://vimeo.com/257314726

@eckilson said:

@canonymous said:
When paddling in a solo canoe, I try to avoid an onside heel, because that can give a canoe a tendency to turn to your off-side, with the result that you need even stronger correction strokes to go straight.
As a river paddler, I rarely do an offside heal - it can be a recipe for disaster crossing eddy lines, and I have never noticed my boats respond that way. I think of the offside heal for freestyle, or turning in sea kayaks more than canoes, but I don’t paddle long straight lake cruisers.

For river paddling on- or offside heeling is indeed more done for stability and dryness purposes and not for turning, as whitewater designs are plenty manoeuvrable and rarely bothered with weathervaning situations.
For touring canoes heeling can induce a turning effect. But it can be hard to find out how exactly a canoe reacts with a heel, because with neutral designs the effect is small and only happens when going really straight forward. For designs that are not neutral, it is easier to find out: move straight forward and then heel to the right and when it starts to turn to the left, heel to left. When it comes back and starts turning to the right you know it is not a ‘neutral’ design in that respect. (Personnaly I avoid these kind of designs for touring purposes as they can make forward paddling in waves ‘complicated’ .)

@canonymous said:
Only when whitewater is added, it gets some footage, like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmsExeth-08

[…] I never thought this video was a particularly good example of whitewater paddling,
Well in fact that confirms what I meant to say:
this is a touring canoe paddled with touring techniques that probably only gets some footage because it was done in some whitewater. At least I don’t know interesting videos that really show that kind of touring techniques on flatwater.

I don’t get tumblehome either (although I’‘ve been jostled around in a c1 like a pinball at the bottom of Lost Paddle) Steve in Idaho’s video of an inside edge circle has me wantin’ to yelp “heel ya!” while the canonymous flick is totally “slice and dice” A long time ago we argued the merits of an OT tripper vs MR Explorer- different strokes for different boats and diferent folks. As far as it bein’ ww or not, that all depends on if I end up swimmin’. Everything I paddle is always at least class I, how else could I explain a swim?.

@tdaniel said:
I don’t get tumblehome either […]
All in all I think we agree that tumblehome can make paddling easier, and that is probably the main design reason for it, although structural advantages for the hull may also be a reason?
The question why tumblehome is making paddling easier, is somewhat harder to answer, as you can see when reading this thread.