Freestyle Canoe Paddling

We will discuss some of the freestyle techniques  which can be used in recreational paddling to improve efficiency and make paddling more fun. You will learn how to plane a canoe with three strokes which allows the canoe to be  maneuvered more easily and makes paddling graceful  and more fun. Freestyle paddling makes it easy to become a part of the natural setting you are in. The idea is to do it in a way that blends you in with nature. This is especially useful when doing things like bird watching from the canoe. Done properly, the birds will let you paddle close to them. You can leave your binoculars at home. It's possible to paddle without noticeable motion and the animals seem to tolerate you being close.

This will be done at Rotary Park down by the canoe put in where the picnic tables are located. It will be a Tuesday morning meeting so time will be limited. To make it work, we can have the discussion and then a practice session on a weekend date that we will pick at the end of the meeting.

Another useful thing that we should do is discuss how to land a canoe. Crash landing a canoe and then exiting before it capsizes is not the best way. There's a real easy way to land, exit, and look cool all the while. Your audience will be impressed.

What we'll talk about is not the Boy Scout  method of paddling. That's way too hard. We're old enough that we can start with and just do the advanced easy fun stuff. This sounds like a contradiction but you'll see that it is not. When I discovered this concept, it changed the way I approach everything, not just paddling.