Kayarchy - the sea kayaker's online handbook and reference

1. Hold your paddle in the basic paddling position.

2. Bring your right arm up and across your face until your right elbow is in front of your nose and your paddle shaft is almost vertical. The left blade will be in the water doing the work, so we'll call it the active blade. At this point, keep the left blade just above the water.

3. Twist your control hand if necessary so that the power face of the left blade is towards the side of the kayak. Keep sitting comfortably upright, rotate your upper body to the left, and reach out to the side with your left blade as far as you comfortably can.

4. Plant the blade in the water about 2 feet from the side of the kayak. Look in the direction you want to go. Pull the active blade towards the kayak. Lift the active blade out of the water before it meets the side of your kayak (see important note below).

5. Repeat. Your kayak moves sideways through the water.

If you find that the front end moves sideways faster than the back, lean backwards a little so that the blade applies its power a little closer to the back of the kayak. If the back end is going faster than the front, lean forwards a little.

IMPROVEMENT 1: Try pushing outwards with your upper hand as you pull the lower hand towards you. It will keep your paddle more vertical, and give each stroke a little more power.

IMPROVEMENT 2: For best control, always make the paddle blade move through the water at a right-angle to the centre line of the kayak, rather than pulling the blade towards your body.

IMPORTANT NOTE: At the end of a draw stroke, you want to lift the active blade out of the water. You can't easily lift the blade unless you twist it so it's at 90 degrees to the side of your kayak.

If you don't twist the blade before your kayak hits it, this will happen: Your kayak will stop moving sideways the instant it hits the paddle, your body will continue to move sideways, your paddle will be knocked out of your hand, and you will do an instant capsize towards the paddle.

In other words, you'll trip over the active blade.

This is how to do it:
Just before the blade reaches the side of the kayak, twist the shaft so that the power face is pointing towards the back of the kayak.

Now you can lift the blade, and it will slice up through the water like a knife.

Draw strokes and edging
When a kayak goes sideways fast, water piles up on its leading edge. It makes a cushion of water which can even start to build up on the deck. This cushion may trip you so that you capsize. On fast moving water, it's often necessary to edge your kayak. This means lifting one knee to raise one edge of the kayak. You raise the edge above the cushion of water. See Breaking In, Breaking Out.

Most coaches today say that you should edge your kayak when you do a draw stroke. In the photos at the top of this page, the kayaker is doing a draw stroke and he's not edging. His kayak is sitting level on the water. He's moving right along, he's still the right way up and the world has not ended. However if you want kayaking qualifications, you will have to show the examiner that you can edge your kayak with confidence.

The kayaker in this graphic is moving to the right, and he has raised his right knee to edge the kayak. A little water is piling up on the leading edge of the kayak, but most of this "cushion" is going underneath the kayak.

Some coaches say "raise the leading edge when you're doing draw strokes in a river kayak; raise the other edge when you're doing draw strokes in a sea kayak".

Confident paddlers often edge and lean towards the direction they want to go, so they can reach out much further sideways with the paddle. It's an unstable position, and if you overdo it a lot of water will pile up on your deck and slow you down, but it's fun to do when you're having a sideways race with your friends.

"Old school" draw strokes or latest method?

"Hey, wait a moment - you just said the upper arm should be across the kayaker's face, like in the photos, but in the graphics it's below his chin!"
Well, most coaches today say that having your top arm in front of your face is "old school" and:

• your top arm should be lower, below the level of your chin. This means that you can see over your top arm. It also means that if you're on moving water and you run into a tree while doing this stroke, you're less likely to get tangled up.
• the active blade will then be deeper under water. Because the active blade is below the kayak, the lump of water you pull towards you with each draw stroke will pass underneath the kayak, not hit the side of the kayak.

It's useful to be able to do it both ways. The old school version is better for shallow water, and makes it easier to lift your active blade out of the water at the end of each draw stroke. With the new version, at the end of each draw stroke, after you twist the paddle blade, it may be easier not to lift it out of the water. Instead you can slice it through the water, away from the kayak, until it's in position ready for your next draw stroke.

Again, this is not an essential stroke but it is powerful, elegant and good practice. The effect is the same as the ordinary draw stroke, but the blade stays in the water the whole time.

Thank you to Alan Byde for permission to reproduce this illustration from his book Living Canoeing (A&C Black, 1969).

Rather than pulling the blade towards the kayak, you make it move forwards and backwards along an imaginary straight line parallel to the kayak. The leading edge of the paddle is always angled away from the kayak at about 45 degrees, and this pulls the kayak sideways towards the paddle.