Perfect Your Pry Canoe Technique

Skills

Photo: Joannie and Gary McGuffin. — Pry technique demonstrated.

This article on how to perfect your pry stroke was originally published in Canoeroots and Family Camping magazine.

All pries use the paddle shaft as a lever against the gunwale to move the canoe away from the paddle. The resulting action of the canoe differs depending on the placement of the pry, whether the canoe is moving (dynamic) or not moving (static), and whether the pry is used in a solo or tandem situation. These four useful solo maneuvers are performed using variations of this adaptable stroke.

Solo Offside Abeam

STROKE Dynamic pry 

WHEN Use to move the canoe directly sideways away from the side you are paddling on.

HOW This pry uses short, quick motions to lever against the gunwale. Rotate your upper body toward the onside gunwale and place the paddle at your hip with the shaft vertical and the powerface of the blade against the hull. Pull the paddle grip across your chest. Once your control hand reaches the canoe’s center- line, turn your control thumb out and slice the blade back under the canoe to repeat.

TIP Think of your shaft hand as an oarlock, and keep the paddle shaft anchored to the gun- wale throughout. Avoid rocking the canoe back and forth as you pull.

Solo Offside Sideslip

STROKE Stationary pry 

WHEN Use to sideslip the canoe around an obstacle without having to turn, change direction or sacrifice speed.

HOW Get some speed paddling forward. At the end of a forward stroke, turn your control thumb back and slice the blade into the hull at your hip. The powerface is facing the hull. the blade should be slightly angled in the direction you want to go. Keep the blade in this static position. Weight your onside knee so the canoe meets the least amount of water resistance as it moves sideways.

TIP: Adjust the paddle shaft slightly forward or backward of your hip to ensure that the canoe does not turn as it moves sideways.

Solo Offside U-turn

STROKE Sliding pry

WHEN Use to turn the canoe around 180 degrees without switching paddling sides. This elegant, exciting offside turn requires good boat control and balance.

HOW Initiate the turn with a forward sweep, edging the canoe to the outside of the turn. Following the sweep, knife the leading edge of the paddle blade to meet the hull. The paddle shaft is vertical and the force of the water is on the back of the blade. Smoothly slide the vertical paddle shaft along the gunwale toward the bow as far as you can comfortably reach, rotating your onside shoulder forward.

TIP Maintaining an upright body position (j-lean) is essential for keeping your balance.

Offside Capsize Recovery

STROKE Righting pry 

WHEN Use to recover your balance and prevent a capsize to the offside. if you are tipping away from the side you are paddling on, the righting pry is a very effective and powerful correction that takes guts and commitment.

HOW Slice the paddle toward your hip, keep- ing the paddle shaft vertical. set the shaft against the gunwale and turn your control thumb back so the blade is parallel with the canoe. push down on the grip to submerge the blade deep in the water. pull the grip toward you, past the centerline.

TIP Push down on the grip and choke up your shaft hand to submerge the blade deep in the water for a successful pry.

—Words and photos adapted from Gary and Joanie McGuffin’s Paddle Your Own Canoe.

This article originally appeared in Canoeroots & Family Camping, Early Summer 2011. Download our freeiPad/iPhone/iPod Touch App or Android App or read it here.

Open Canoe Bracing Techniques

Skills

Brace yourself to never flip again. Photo: Virginia Marshall — Brace yourself to never flip again.

This open canoe technique article describes how to effectively brace and was originally published in Rapid magazine.
Any brace is a good brace—even if you high braced when you should have low braced or vice versa. Having your paddle in the water contributes to your stability.

FORWARD STROKE 

When to Use: Flipping to either side. 

Pros and Cons: The best brace is often a for- ward stroke. When a paddle is in the water with force against the blade, it’s extremely stabilizing. For beginners, doing a forward stroke takes the guesswork out of which brace to choose. The forward stroke has the additional benefit of keeping your canoe moving. Also, some paddlers become habitual low bracers—bracing their way down the river rather than paddling. Using the forward stroke as a brace will help break this habit.

LOW BRACE 

When to Use: Flipping to your onside. 

How to: With your paddle perpendicular to your canoe, slap the water with the back of your blade and use the momentary support to drop your head and move your body towards the opposite (high) gunwale. 

Pros and Cons: Repeated efforts to low brace often result in the paddle sinking and the canoe flipping. Ideally, this brace is a one shot deal to recover and get moving. Doing a stationary brace has one drawback—it’s stationary. A boat is easier to control when it’s underway and this brace doesn’t provide momentum.

RIGHTING PRY 

When to Use: Flipping to your offside. 

How to: Hold your paddle vertically, blade in the water at your hip and lever off the hull with your top hand. 

Pros and Cons: This is an unbelievably solid way to keep your boat upright but it takes presence of mind to employ. The force that’s created from levering your paddle off the hull is very strong. Avoid mashing the thumb of your lower hand between your boat and paddle by keeping it on top of the shaft with the rest of your fingers.

When you’re tipping to your offside, the water feels a long way from your blade. A key part of an effective righting pry is reaching to place your entire blade in the water. Unlike the low brace, the righting pry is often most successful after multiple attempts as you continue to work at finding purchase in the water.

HIGH BRACE 

When to Use: Flipping to your offside 

How to: Reach your paddle over the high gunwale and grab the water as if you were doing a draw.

Pros and Cons: Much maligned as the least effective brace, it nevertheless looks spectacular in photos. Be aware there is concern that doing a high brace may cause shoulder injury. A good rule of thumb to avoid injury is to stop doing the high brace if you find your lower arm is being forced away from your rib cage.

No matter which brace you use, bring your head and body back over the canoe’s centerline to restore stability.

Remember—even if you have the perfect paddle position for a brace, it’s worthless unless you right the boat and correct your center of gravity.

This article originally appeared in Rapid, Early Summer 2011. Download our free iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch App or Android App or read it here.

Technique: Rappel to the River

Skills

Photo: Maxi Kniewasser — Rappelling to the river.

This technique article discusses how to rappel with your kayak to the water and was originally published in Rapid magazine.

Steep walled canyons make accessing some runs a challenge. Down climbing often seems easier but when done properly, rappelling makes canyon access much safer.

Kayakers don’t usually carry heavy climbing gear so we have to do our best with a limited set of tools. Master these four basic components to a rappel and you’ll be tackling runs otherwise left behind.

Anchors

Sturdy trees make great anchors. Tie a segment of nylon webbing around the base of the tree using a water knot and clip on a locking carabiner. Wrapping the rope direct- ly around the tree can damage both the tree and the rope. If a tree isn’t available, artificial anchors such as nuts or pitons also work, though these require more expertise to set securely. Always place two or more artificial anchors to provide adequate protection.

Rope

Think about rappelling when selecting a throw rope. Only rappel off throw ropes with a Spectra core because it’s the strongest option. Spectra has a low melting point so rappel slowly or wet the rope be- forehand to help dissipate heat from friction. Getting adequate rope length may require tying two throw ropes together using a double fisherman’s knot. To ensure the rope doesn’t get caught, untie it from the bag. Feed the rope through the locking carabiner that is attached to your anchor. On more popular runs, secure a fixed line.

Rappel Devices

A harness can be improvised with a long sling. To control your descent, attach a friction device to a locking biner affixed to your harness’ belay loops. A figure eight or ATC are common mechanical friction devices. If you’re rappelling on a single throw rope or fixed line, a Munter hitch can also be used, requiring one less piece of hardware.

Rappeller

To descend in control, face the wall with feet shoulder-width apart and lean back slowly, keeping the rope taut, until your legs are perpendicular to the slope. The breaking hand controls the speed the rope travels through the friction device and must always remain on the rope.

Boats should be lowered separately unless you are descending straight into the water. In this case, secure the kayak to a cowtail attached to a quick release belt on the your PFD. Be prepared for the extra weight to pull you off balance. Another option that’s easier on the rappeller but takes a little longer is to tie the boat directly into the rope.

When paddling with a large group, keep in mind that rappelling is fairly slow and creates bottlenecks. For more information refer to the latest edition of The Mountaineers Books’ Freedom of the Hills.

This article originally appeared in Rapid, Early Summer 2011. Download our free iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch App or Android App or read it here.

Clipper Sea-1 Canoe Review

Photo: Clipper Canoes — Clipper Sea-1 Decked Canoe

Review of Clipper Canoes Sea-1 decked canoe from Canoeroots and Family Camping magazine.

The Sea-1 is ideal for wilderness sea touring and can be paddled with either a canoe or kayak paddle. A large cockpit provides easy access to cargo. The flared bow rises over and sheds waves in even the most adverse conditions. The V-hull provides excellent tracking and a rudder is standard. The Sea-1 has built-in foam flotation in the bow and the stern. Nylon spraydeck and contoured yoke are available options.

Clipper Canoes Sea-1 Specs

Length: 17’9″

Width: 28″

Hull Material: Fiberglass

Weight: 65 lbs

MSRP: $2,800

Available in Kevlar: $3,475 and 55 lbs

www.clippercanoes.com

This article originally appeared in Canoeroots & Family Camping, Early Summer 2011. Download our freeiPad/iPhone/iPod Touch App or Android App or read it here.

Nova Craft Rob Roy Canoe Review

The Rob Roy is an excellent choice for solo paddlers who want a fast, stable cruising boat that still handles well in windy and wavy conditions. Small, easy to portage and highly maneuverable, it has enough cargo space for a week of interior tripping. The Rob Roy combines the enjoyment of canoe tripping with the versatility of a kayak.

Photo: Nova Craft — Feature image: Courtesy Nova Craft

Nova Craft Rob Roy Specs

Length: 13′
Width: 29″
Hull Material: Fiberglass
Weight: 45 lbs
MSRP: $1,699

Available in ultralight Kevlar caron/Spectra for $2,999 at 32 lbs

www.novacraftcanoe.com

This article originally appeared in Canoeroots & Family Camping, Early Summer 2011. Download our freeiPad/iPhone/iPod Touch App or Android App or read it here.

Stellar Kayaks S16 Kayak Review

Photo: Tory Bowman — Stellar Kayaks S16 Kayak

A review of Stellar Kayaks’ S16 from Adventure Kayak magazine.

Launched in 2008, Stellar Kayaks is a true child of globalization, harnessing North American and European engineering, Asian manufacturing and the efficiencies of world- wide distribution. The S16 Advantage blends the best of these worlds, offering outstanding value and exceptionally light weight in a capable, all-around day tripper and tourer.

The S16’s hull shape is classic, reminiscent of early West Coast designs—soft chines and a shallow-arch bottom. The streamlined shape stems from the designers’ background in the rowing industry crafting shells for WinTech Racing. Stellar applied sophisticated computer design to the problem of efficiency, stating, “When it comes to speed we strive to get as close to a cylindrical hull cross-section as we can, while still being able to keep the boat upright.” A rounded cross-section produces less wetted surface area with less drag than a comparable hard-chined kayak. Evolution endowed the same common sense hydrodynamics to whales and sea lions.

The end result is a kind of computer-engineered perfection, the optimization of a touring kayak’s various competing requirements—speed, efficiency, stability, carrying capacity, durability, weight and price—in a utilitarian package. The S16’s looks lack some of the personality of more whimsically fashioned kayaks, but it’s hard to argue with a formula that works.

The S16’s initial stability hits the sweet spot, lively in rough water and easy to edge without feeling twitchy. High volume above the waterline provides a reassuring zone of secondary stability and contributes to excellent storage capacity and dry decks. Turning is a breeze—four sweeps to turn 90 degrees on an even keel; just a couple when edging. Tracking is moderate and the rudder helps with any issues there.

Great value all-round touring kayak

Some features of the S16 feel bare bones—simple bolted-on grab handles, absent day hatch, thinly padded thigh braces under the spare coaming of the oval cockpit (I’d prefer a keyhole shape with more surface to grip the thighs). But the deck is clean and neatly finished with recessed fittings and drain channels around the hatches. The most distinctive element is also characteristically functional: cutaways near the knees for paddle clearance during high-angle strokes.

Where the S16 shines brightest is its highly engineered composite construction. Stellar offers four layups priced $1,845 to $4,310 US. Our Advantage, though only the second-tier, is an impressively stiff and svelte 37 pounds and priced well below many comparable, much heavier, competitors. Between layers of fiberglass, Stellar sandwiches a core material called Soric, a polyester membrane also used in fighter jets and wind turbines that adds thickness and strength without the weight of additional glass layers.

Priced to rival plastic, the Advantage offers a stunning value for such a lightweight layup. This feature alone should put it high on the list for anyone looking at a 16-foot, all-around touring kayak in the $2,000 range.

Spacious and Space-Age

Stellar hatch covers are domed to shed water and snap on and off with ease.

Easy Drop Rudder

We love how easy it is to deploy and retract the drop-down Kajak Sport KS- Navigator rudder.

Fancy Footwork

Two-piece pedals with rudder control on the upper half allow steering finesse, power and a stable foot platform—a plus in rough conditions and for rolling.

Stellar Kayaks S16 Specs

Length: 16 ft

Width: 22 in

Weight: 37 lbs

Capacity: 50 lbs

Price: $2,330 US/CDN

www.stellarkayaksusa.com

This article originally appeared in Adventure Kayak, Early Summer 2011. Download our free iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch App or Android App or read it here.

Big Dog Flux Kayak Review

Photo: Neil Wright — Big Dog Kayaks Flux Review

A review of the Big Dog Flux, a whitewater kayak, from Rapid magazine.

Honda Racing fairing kits, a Guinness record setting English Channel kayak crossing, motorcycle land speed record attempts and benchmark- setting whitewater, sea, surf and squirt kayak designs. What do these things have in common? For the players behind British upstart Big Dog Kayaks, it’s the seeming contradictions that are the strengths of this emerging brand. Big Dog’s line-up of eye-catching kayaks benefits from the diverse pedigrees of its designers. Popping up on English boating forums as “3wisemonkeys,” co-owners Peter Orton and Jason Buxton and sales manager Andy Whiting are all former members of the British freestyle kayak team. Orton and Buxton are also ex R&D department heads at P&H and Pyranha, respectively, while Whiting was involved with Riot and Peak UK.

The company’s stealthy launch into a severely depressed market in the spring of 2009 surprised many industry pundits, but Orton stated he was excited by his fledgling brand’s fresh, if inauspicious, start: “It will live or die entirely on the strength of what we do.”

Playful riverrunner

Three seasons on, the Big Dog website bills the brand “Britain’s fastest growing whitewater kayak company.” Cheeky. Although the boats are still scarce in North America, Big Dogs are creeping across the pond with containers of Orton and Buxton’s popular Valley sea kayak brand.

So what are Big Dogs like? Former Riot frontman Corran Addison says they look like Dagger bred with Fluid (actually, being Corran, he writes on a U.K. forum, “Dagger had sex with a Fluid!”). The functional, no frills outfitting in our test boat used a twin ratchet backrest, aggressive thigh grips and a full plate footrest to adjust for a positive fit.

The Flux is Big Dog’s offering in the one-boat does- it-all “playful river runner” category. The combination of full volume and a planing hull is reminiscent of popular river runners like the Diesel, Mamba or Remix, but the Flux’s highly rockered hull has a feel all its own. Forgiving rails make for effortless crosscurrent charging, spinning on a wave and rolling, but less-than snappy eddy turns. Keeping your weight forward and driving aggressively from the bow avoids washing out on eddy lines.

An ancient Chinese proverb states: A dog in a kennel barks at its fleas; a hunting dog does not feel them. Raised on lean times, Big Dog isn’t whimpering at its biggest hurdle—getting butts in the boats. As Orton, Buxton and Whiting doggedly attack the North American market, expect to see more of these puppies in the future.

BIG DOG FLUX M / L SPECS

LENGTH: 7’3” / 7’7”

WIDTH: 24.5” / 25.5”

WEIGHT: 34 / 36 lbs

PADDLER: 100–190 / 150–240 lbs

MSRP: $1,049 US

www.bigdogkayaks.com

This article originally appeared in Rapid, Summer/Fall 2011. Download our free iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch App or Android App or read it here.

Open Canoe Shootout

Photo: Scott MacGregor — Esquif Zephyr in open canoe shootout.

Open Canoe Shootout | Mad River and Esquif | Rapid Magazine

This faceoff between two whitewater open canoes, the Mad River Outrage and the Esquif Zephyr, is from Rapid magazine.

The Esquif Zephyr and the Mad River Outrage are two often-recommended boats for paddlers seeking a canoe that inspires immediate confidence. Beginners and nervous boaters love them both, as do many old hands who’ve enjoyed decades of different designs. Beyond that, however, they don’t have much in common.

The hull material, design, stability and dryness are so different that it’s really no wonder these boats appeal to such a wide array of paddlers, all of whom will argue passionately for their favorite.

Esquif Zephyr

The Zephyr’s lightness is certainly appealing—13 pounds less to throw over your head and straight-arm onto your roof racks, 13 pounds less to accelerate through an eddy. Outward flaring sides keep it dry even when the circumstances should cause it to fill with water. Its flat bottom makes it a surfing machine with an added bonus—the security of pronounced primary stability. Its sharp entry point and long waterline allow paddlers to accelerate the Zephyr with only a couple of strokes and carry speed easily.

The Twin-Tex hull—a comingled product based on reinforced glass fibers and thermoplastic polymers—is where the Zephyr dream starts to fade for boaters looking for a hard-wearing canoe. The stock outfitting is factory-installed using an exotic two-part, space-age glue that requires vacuum bagging machinery to exert the necessary pressure to effectively make the anchors stick. Should your outfitting begin to release, the boat must go back to the factory or to an installer with a vacuum bagger for reworking. Hull damage requires special repair expertise that is also not readily available.

Mad River Outrage

The Mad River Outrage. Photo: Mad River

Mad River Canoe’s Jim Henry and Tom Foster designed the Outrage as an asymmetrical, shallow-arch hull with extreme rocker—extreme because it starts almost at the center of the boat and rolls up five and a half inches all the way to the ends. The Outrage tapers both laterally and longitudinally making it more maneuverable and giving it better final stability than a flat-bottomed hull, though it doesn’t plane as well. The boat carves effortlessly and rolls up quickly when full of water. The larger Outrage X is also available, scaled up to carry paddlers over 200 pounds or folks who just like lots of boat around them.

The Outrage might buckle your knees as you heft it but the penalty may be worth paying. Its proven Royalex construction is resistant to impact in cruel river playgrounds and has a memory to return to its original molded form. It is repairable by (almost) anyone who can open a can of epoxy and cut Kevlar cloth. Its outfitting is installed with vinyl glue and contact cement available at any hardware store.

The Outrage and Zephyr are both fine boats to recommend to a friend just starting out, or to paddle yourself for stable, lively fun. If endless surf and effortless portages back to the top of the play run are your top priorities, choose the Zephyr—just keep it off the rocks. If you prefer a super durable, go anywhere ride and don’t mind shouldering a few extra pounds, the Outrage is your faithful workhorse.

This article originally appeared in Rapid, Early Summer 2011. Download our free iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch App or Android App or read it here.

Freeridin’ with Woody and the New Liquidlogic Kayak

Videos

Woody shows Rapid Media the ins and outs of the new LiquidLogic Kayak – The Freeride. This boat isn’t about getting the biggest air, running the steep creeks, it’s all about getting real paddlers out on the water and having fun.

Paddling at MACKfest

Videos

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The Marmora and Area Canoe and Kayak Festival (MACKfest) just kicked off the paddling season in Ontario for it’s 4th season. There was a freestyle competition, extreme down river race, raffles, gear swap, live band, vendors, camping, good food, and great rivers. Here is a short highlight vid of what it’s all about and look for Rapid Media TV to be there again next year.