Morning. What is the best solo stroke for maneuvering a 90 degree turn, narrow path with the water running into an object? I usually try to draw the rear to the outside going through it but sometimes it seems to pull against the log/rock. This is just a creek I’m talking about, nothing so fast it would be life threating. Thanks for any help.
L/R paddling or just one side?
EG are you looking for strokes L, R, L or just L, L, L, as it can be accomplished two ways, well actually three.
but I’m going to assume you don’t want to do a braking stroke followed by opposite side sweep stroke. So two ways to accomplish.
Oh and welcome aboard @wayne1967
I normally paddle just on the right side. I’m willing to learn new things though.
So if the turn is going right you are saying break on the right side to bring the front out and then sweep on the left on the tail end to move the rear out and away?
So bear with me regarding, I’m going to relate canoe strokes back from my white watering canoe days.
I’m going to just play it out as if you were making a left turn, youd reverse things for a right turn.
Hard fast left -
- Braking Stroke on left side (*reversed sweep stroke.) Start wide angle in as you are making the reverse stroke. Sweep stroke on right side, Start close to boat exit away from boat.
*Can also be a reversed J-stroke.depending on need.
Repeat as necessary to to accomplish turn.
-
J-Stroke with sweep stroke. J-Stroke left side, start away from the boat cut in to the boat towards the end of stroke. Sweep Stroke Right side.
-
One side, Left side nothing but a slight edge and J-Strokes.
-
one side Right Side, nothing but but sweep strokes
-
Inline paddling one side Paddle goes straight front to back, turning is effected by blade facing for left turn blade is canted towards the 45 deg facing towards the boat, for right turn blade face is canted 45 deg away from the boat. This stroke is usually used not so much for turning but to keep the boat going straight in a river current.
This is in order (If I remember correctly) of turning speed. and how fast you can make the boat come about #1 being the fastest #5 being the slowest.
since I was running class 2-4 rivers at the time I mostly used #1 as I needed to make maneuvers fast.
On slow water, lazy river to class 1, or lake, depending on how fast I wanted to turn I’d use options 2-5 as option #1 bleeds off speed in deference to making the turn happen “NOW!”
you can also modify #1 and just use braking for a slightly slower turn.
Remember these are waters that are moving me without paddling at 4-6mph or more so a braking maneuver isn’t costly for making a turn. so here it’s more about making the turn than turning without losing speed.
there’s probably some other tricks I’ve forgotten. Such as using the oar as a makeshift rudder.
1 Like
#1. Very Short Answer:
It sounds to me like you can probably avoid drawing the stern to the outside simply by drawing or prying the bow to the inside instead. That can often allow you to follow more closely along the inside boundary of your area available for turning, thus giving you more clearance on the outside. It also slows the boat less than swinging the stern, so it might be easier to exit the area of difficulty in less time, which is one way of dealing with cross currents.
#2. Slightly Longer Answer:
You might be able to back-ferry into slacker water at the inside of the turning area to create more maneuvering room and to avoid needing to steer or pivot your boat while you are in the worst area of current, then make a pivot (to avoid using much space, yet it can also be done on the fly) and use draws or pries to keep the whole boat from being pushed downstream into the obstacle. Both techniques are in play in this clip, with the back-ferry being the most important in this case, but with several followup pry strokes being an easy option for resisting the bit of sideways current still running into those obstacles when the boat is farther into the turn. The right turn which was done after the back-ferry in this clip could have been done differently, such as by making it sharper and thus mostly eliminating the need for pries, but the method shown was very comfortable.
#3. Very Long Answer:
The situation you describe is very vague, and the possibilities for making such a 90-degree turn are numerous. I can tell you with certainty that when I’ve needed to do a turn on a creek in a situation matching your description, there simply is not a “best way” to do it. It’s going to depend on the layout and speed of the current, the amount of space available, and the nature of your canoe. Give me a bunch of different situations where I need to make that kind of turn, and I bet there will be around a dozen different ways that I might do it, depending on what I see and feel, and which of my canoes I am using. What I have written below is more about encouraging you to think in new ways than as a way of telling you what you should do.
The layout and speed of the current will matter because oftentimes you can plan ahead and use the current to help you, instead of fighting the current (or you might avoid the worst of the current as in Answer #2 above). Here’s an example. I know of one particular sharp bend on a tiny local creek which requires a 90-degree turn to the right within a space that is barely larger than what the canoe must occupy, and with the inside boundary being the biggest constraint, the turn must be a pivot. However, the current is quite brisk and swirly and there are a couple of downed trees which are in exactly the wrong places so that trying to pivot the canoe to the right causes one end of the boat or the other to be pushed by the current into one tree or the other. Even though it’s a right turn, it just so happens that a paddler can take advantage of the strange current patterns to start the turn a little earlier than where a right turn would be possible, by pivoting the canoe to the LEFT, and then continuing that pivot through a full 270 degrees to finally end up as a right turn, with much of this being done prior to when it would have been possible to initiate the more obvious option of pivoting to the right (which, as mentioned, is a bad method at this location anyway). The result is an effortless turn which the existing current path actually assists me with, leaving me perfectly lined up to exit this spot. I’m not saying this is what you should do in the situation you describe. What I’m saying is that you need to assess the situation and be creative, rather than thinking about what’s “the best way”. Being creative requires the ability to do a great variety of strokes and to make the boat move in a variety of “non-standard” ways. The overwhelming majority of canoe paddlers do all their maneuvers in essentially the same way as a captain steers a ship, but canoes are so much more versatile than that.
The design of your canoe will matter because some canoes track more loosely than others, with those that track harder being more prone to having one end or the other get “blown” into an obstacle by the current during sharp maneuvers. The less maneuverable the canoe, the more it helps to rely on ferrying on a micro scale, where you stop the boat or at least slow down so that the current speed is greater than your boat speed, and then change your heading such that the interaction between your “true” speed and direction and that of the water causes you to move crosswise to the current without ever putting your boat broadside to the current. This can be a good way to maneuver, but it can also set up making a turn or pivot in some easier way than would be possible if simply traveling forward at the speed of the current or faster.
Suggestions: Learn a few different ways to paddle the canoe in a straight line while padding on one side, instead of just one way, and that will get you thinking about new ways of controlling your canoe. Learn to paddle equally well on either side. Learn to do side-slips, both directly to the side and while traveling forward (with the result being a diagonal course). Learn to do pivots. And learn to initiate turns with different variations of a forward rudder, perhaps more properly described as a stationary draw or pry, planted alongside the boat at the proper angle and location to get the job done. YouTube is full of teaching videos, some good and some bad, but it’s a good place to go browsing.
Here is a clip which shows canoers making their boats do things on a little creek which you might not have envisioned before (i.e., canoes maneuvering but without steering like ships). Yes, there’s an element of the dramatic here, but you can do these same maneuvers with a more casual mood. There also are some examples of great expertise appearing here and there regarding extreme leans to aid in pivoting, which is wonderful if you can do it, but in most cases you can accomplish what you need with less-extreme skills and while utilizing a smaller amount of lean.
You can look for other videos on this guy’s channel which will illustrate these kinds of principles, and from there (in combination with some of the more-basic instruction videos on YouTube), you can learn exactly what these paddlers are doing to make the boat respond as it does. It’s worth noting that in this video or others like it on this guy’s channel, no one ever applies a braking stroke to initiate a turn or pivot.
2 Likes
Wow thanks for the responses. I’ll have to try these suggestions next time
Few paddle routes can compare to Brown’s Tract in the Adirondacks for narrow quick sharp turns, It is on the Northern Forest Canoe Trail, and also is my favorite part of the Adirondack Canoe Classic, the 90 mile canoe race. Including my annual 90 miler, training runs, and Cannonball-90 trips, I have paddled Brown’s nearly 50 times and think that I am pretty good at it. Paddling it at race speed, I have paddled solo, C2, C4 and also in a 34 foot cedarstrip voyageur. most often I am paddling from the bow seat, unless I am solo of course. I love how timing and paddle placement with just the right stroke spins me around the many multiple turns of more than 90 degree and tighter turns, one after the other for two and a half miles. Thick weeds and mud banks make it even more interesting. Make one wrong or delayed paddle stroke and you are nosing fast and hard into a muddy and brushy bank. Bow and stern paddlers work together on turns, while middle paddlers (C4 and voyageur) maintain forward power to keep the speed up.
1 Like
That reminds me of the twisting brackish water marshes on the Chesapeake.
At high tide, its possible to go deeper to where the channels are only 3 ft wide. You can go as far aa you your tollerance for the bugs and spiders that shake out of the reeds. By watching the flow of detrius, it’s possible to ride the flood tide on the way in, and then ride the ebb back out.
I agree with GBG’s short answer – do the turn at the bow. Stay on the inside of the turn, but use a bow draw or cross bow draw to pull the bow into the turn, then let the current swing the stern around. So if the turn is to the right, you would be doing your bow draw or cross draw on the right. Nothing wrong with initiating the turn with a J stroke/stern pry, stern draw or sweep/reverse sweep, but those strokes won’t have the same power to turn the boat as the bow draw using the current to swing the stern. Bow pry/cross bow pry is another option, but that is a trickier stroke to execute. It is kind of like doing an eddy turn, but release the draw and resume paddling before the boat comes all the way around.
Don’t know what the object is, but if you happen to get pushed into it then lean into it and push yourself off. Usually, as long as you don’t drop the outside gunnel into the current by leaning away from the obstruction, you should be able to push yourself off.
1 Like