In kayaking, there are two extremes of paddling styles: the active and the passive. In the active style, the paddler is always paddling faster than the current and driving their boat to some point on the river. In the passive style, they paddler floats with the speed of the current and only paddles to avoid obstacles. Most paddlers today lean towards the passive side and for good reason. It’s much easier in today’s more easily turned, slower boats. The faster you go, the harder it is to stay in control. There’s nothing inherintly good or bad about either style; they’re both a means to the same end: having fun getting down the river. Take two paddlers running the same waterfall. One is in a long boat, the other in a standard creek boat. The guy in the creek boat floats with the current, goes over the middle of the falls and plugs it going through the meat of the hole. The second paddler in the long boat starts on river left , paddles diagonally across the river with lots of speed, goes over the lip on the right hand corner and lands flat in the eddy below without getting his hair wet. Two totally different approaches to the same waterfall, each taking advantage of the characteristics of the paddlers boat. Both paddlers have just the same amount of fun.
The sweep stroke is what holds many good paddlers back from being great paddlers. With just a little practice, you can gain so much in power and control on the river. We’ve covered the sweep stroke in the Basics section, but we’ll cover it with a little more depth here.
There are two kinds of sweep strokes:
With the first kind of sweep strokes, stick with the technique I described under the Basics section. In situation #2, we can apply an even more powerful technique. It works the same as the original way, but with three important additions:
As I said in the sweep stroke section, the most powerful part is at the very end of the stroke, towards the stern of your boat. The idea with the one stroke ferry is that you paddle out into the current at a 10 to 11 o’clock angle just as in a normal ferry, but just before the current starts to turn your boat, put your paddle in the water like you’re finishing up the sweep stroke. You should feel lots of resistance against your paddle blade. This is actually a static stroke and you won’t be pulling the blade through the water, but your stomach and arm muscles will be slightly strained trying to keep the boat pointed upstream. Theoretically, you can hang on this one stroke indefinitely to take you across the river, but after awhile, you run out of momentum and the current pushes you downstream. A really cool trick to get tons more leverage out of your “one stroke” is to lean back so your paddle blade is even further back on your stern. This technique will only work in powerful current if you throw your body back as you leave the eddy. Also, if you are in substantial current you can use the blade resistance as a crutch that you can lean on. This way, you can really put your boat on edge as you ferry.
Let’s say you paddle into an eddy caused by a large boulder in the middle of the river and you want to get to the other side of the eddy. Normally, you would have to do an eddy turn, let your boat spin out to a stop and paddle across to the other side. You can do this in one really fun, dynamic move, called the sustained eddy turn. When you come into an eddy with a lot of speed, the river will want to spin you out right away. You can counteract this spin out with a huge sweep stroke. This takes a decent amount of muscle and good sweep stroke technique, especially if your boat has a high volume, rounded stern. You need to be laid out on your back deck with your paddle reaching as far back as you possibly can. Also, put some of your body weight on your paddle. This takes some commitment to do in the middle of a rapid, but is less intimidating in an eddy. This move is the best way to practice a really powerful sweep stroke. I still love doing this style of eddy turn and do it every time I’m out on the river. It just feels awesome.
The dufek is a very useful stroke for quickly turning any boat, but especially long boats. Its so powerful that when some people learn it, its all they want to use and they never learn how to do the basic eddy turn/peel out well. For this reason, I recommend that you get a firm grasp on basic turning maneuvers before venturing into the world of the dufek. The way it works is this: imagine you’re riding along on a bicycle at full speed and to whip yourself around a corner, you grab onto a lamp post. In kayaking, the lamp post is your paddle. When your’re doing an eddy turn for instance, you stab the still water with your paddle as you enter the eddy and your paddle acts as the lamp post. **Illustration** Have the paddle blade facing parallel to the side of the boat. The blade should be about a foot from your boat and placed by your knees. The paddle shaft should be straight up and down, but the blade in the water should be reaching forward some for better turning. Like the sweep, it’s more powerful the closer its placed to the end of the boat. This is what I call a static stroke. You don’t pull the blade through the water with respect to your boat and body. Rather, you’ll feel resistance against the paddle blade and your body straining against the paddle blade and your body straining against this resistance is what makes the stroke happen. One thing to watch out for with the bow draw/dufek is to never let the forearm of your top arm get above your forehead. The reason being that when your arm gets above your head, its very vulnerable to shoulder dislocation. Another caveat is that you need to have good balance in your boat before you start using the stroke. That’s because the way you have your paddle planted in the water vertically, its really hard to quickly take it out and brace.
The bow draw is basically the same stroke as the dufek. The only difference is that you do a dufek when you’re going into an eddy and you use a bow draw to make slight corrections in your line as you paddle down river. The bow draw is also a little bit less of a static stroke than the dufek. You’ll want to place your paddle a foot or so away from the boat then with the dufek and pull it in to change your direction. The thing that makes this stroke so great is the way it lends itself to combo stroking into a forward stroke. Like the dufek, this is a very balancy stroke. A lot of very good paddlers rely heavily on the bow draw to make corrections while they’re paddling through rapids and hardly use the sweep. I go back and forth. Using a forward stroke/sweep combo makes you go faster because you’re pushing the boat forward with your correction. The bow draw slows you down slightly, but is easier to use and gives you more precise control.
When you look at smooth paddlers, you’ll notice that a lot of times they won’t use a textbook bow draw or sweep stroke by itself while paddling through a rapid. They’ll use a combination of the fundamental strokes. By comboing strokes that go well together, you can make your paddling much more efficient by eliminating wasted movement.
One of the most useful of these combos is the forward stroke into the sweep. Remember, the most powerful part of the sweep is right at the end. So while you’re forward paddling. You can throw a sweep stroke in at the end of your forward stroke. **Illustration #1**
When your forward stroke gets to your hip (where you should normally take the paddle out) you slide the blade out so it’s far away from the boat. Now, drop your top arm so that your paddle is horizontal and finish with a sweep stroke.
This combo works so well because when you get to the end of your forward stroke, you are very close to the starting position of the sweep. The two strokes merge well together.
A lot of times when you’re paddling through a rapid and you need a slight direction change, just start a forward stroke with a little bow draw. Another instance when this comes in handy is when you do a tight peel out starting with a dufek/bowdraw into a forward stroke to pick up some speed right away. This is a great one for slalom racers coming out of an upstream gate. Here’s a diagram of one of my favorite river moves and the combo strokes I use. It’s an eddy turn into a small eddy immediately followed by a peel out.
This stroke helps keep your boat straight when you’re floating in flatwater or easy rapids. It’s really helpful for when you’re just floating along, chatting with fellow river runners. It’s a lot of effort to keep your boat straight using good sweep stroke technique. The Lazy Man stroke is an alternative to reverting to sloppy paddling style and is much more efficient and comfortable to hold for long periods. I’ve floated for, literally, miles at a time only using this stroke. **Illustration**
How to do it: This works best with a paddle that has a significant amount of feather and straight shaft. Hold your paddle on the left side of your boat. Keep a hold of it with your control hand (right hand). Let go with you left hand and hold the paddle under the crook of your left arm. It should nestle there comfortably. Let the left blade sit in the water straight up and down, as in the end of a sweep stroke. Now you can use the paddle as a rudder. Use your left elbow to do little sweep strokes or reverse sweep strokes to maintain your angle. You can also get some forward propulsion out of it.