The Top 3 Basic Canoeing Strokes | Canoeing for Beginners | OSMEtv

Hi, my name's Vic and I've been a canoeing instructor in the community with the Red Cross, with the Boy Scouts, at the university level for over 25 years and the things that I've learned I'm going to bring to you but we're not going to get into real detail. We're going to just talk basics so that you can go out on your first time in a canoe and really have an enjoyable experience. That's the power stroke. Catch, pull, feather. Catch, pull, feather. Now if we want to turn the boat exaggerated to the right, we're going to catch and we're going to sweep wide and then feather recovery. Same thing, catch, sweep wide and recover. From the side, catch, sweep wide and recover. Same stroke but that's going to exaggerate your turn. If you have a person in the bow, the sternman is the driver so they can say to the bowman, give me a sweep. I want to try and turn. The bowman's paddling on the right. He's going to say give me a sweep. We want to try and turn left. So the sternman is the driver and basically the bowman is just the motor. So he gets controlled by the sternman. Now if you're by yourself, the next stroke is going to be very important. It's going to be help you be able to control your boat from left to right without changing sides. It's called the J stroke. My boat's this direction. Okay, so we're going to catch, pull all the way back and stop right there. Watch my wrist. I'm turning my thumb down. Now look at the blade. The blade is vertical in the water and we've turned it into a rudder and if I want to correct, I can just push it out a little bit and as you push it out to the left, it's going to turn your right. You push it out to the right, it's going to turn your left. So you can just adjust how you want after you lose your glide or your momentum. You're going to catch again, pull back, J stroke. It creates a little bit of a J and that's going to keep you going straight. As you paddle on the left, your boat's going to turn right. A little bit of a J stroke is going to correct that and you can keep a nice smooth stroke going, keep your your canoe going nice and straight in a very easy manner. The last stroke we're going to talk about is the draw stroke. So if I am in my boat facing this direction and I've come up alongside of the dock and I'm not quite as close as I want to be, I'm going to just catch the water from the side, pull it directly in towards my boat, turn my paddle and feather it back through the water. Draw, feather, draw, feather. That will bring me nicely into the dock and it's just a lot easier to control yourself when you're coming in nice and smooth. Okay, let's talk about who's in charge of driving this canoe. When you're riding in a canoe, it's always the back seat driver and we're going to go over strokes in a minute and it'll become evident as to why. I'll do a little bit of a stroke to pull me out and as I face you, you'll see that if I make a sweep stroke, sweep out wide on my left, that the canoe is going to turn to the right. I reverse sweep and it turns the other direction. So I'm going to back off a little bit. First stroke is just go straight down. I'm going to sweep out left and it's going to turn right. Sweep left, sweep right, turn left. When you're alone in your canoe, one of the great strokes that makes it very easy to control your canoe is a J-stroke. A J-stroke starts with a power stroke. Pull straight back, turn the blade parallel with the canoe and pull out just a little bit and that'll make a correction. We'll do that one more time. If I have my canoe out of the water, or my, excuse me, if I have my paddle out of the water, pull straight back, watch my thumb, turn my wrist down and my blade is going to be parallel and that's going to act as a rudder to keep my canoe going straight. Pull back out a little bit and demonstrate how you can make your canoe go straight while paddling on the same side. Power stroke, turn the wrist down, recover, power stroke, turn the wrist down. I'm going to make a big reverse sweep, hold me up next to the dock, nice and smooth. When you're canoeing, because the person in the back, the sternman, is the driver, he gets to choose the side that he likes to paddle on. So my preference is the left side. If I have a person in the front, then I'm going to ask him to paddle on the right side. That's going to equalize the amount of pressure we're using with our paddles as we stroke and that will keep us going straight. So let's go for a ride. All right, here we go. Let's see if we can just make a straight line. You can watch behind me, pick out a point and see if I can do a nice J stroke. Nice and smooth, no splashing with the paddle and if you're doing it correctly, you'll be able to go pretty much in a straight line. Now you can't tell, but I've got a little bit of wind that's coming from my right side and it's trying to push me a little bit. So I can vary my stroke with a sweep stroke to correct that or I can hold the J stroke down in the water as a rudder a little bit longer and it makes it very easy. We're going to make a reverse sweep here and just turn around. Let's just see the view behind me just like that. A nice pivot and we'll make our make our way back across this small pond to the dock. This is an easy stroke. If you're learning yourself or if you're teaching a youth group, you can watch my hand as I turn it down. We'll do a nice gentle stroke straight. If you follow the line of the keel, nice straight down on your power stroke, hold that blade over a little bit, recover. Catch, pull, recover. Catch, pull, recover. That's canoeing. We're not going to get too technical with our strokes, but as you can see we're pulling into the dock sideways. I'm just using a little sculling stroke which will move you exactly where you want to be and move you gently in. That may be for another lesson or if a lot of you out there are interested in a lot of details about canoeing, we're happy to give you more instruction and we could probably do a couple of hours on on strokes and technicalities of the boat and how to buy the right paddle, what to look for in a boat, but that's another lesson. Right now we're just teaching the basics and hope this is going to bring you some happiness as you get into the outdoors.