Byron Bradley: My name is Byron Bradley. I am an American Canoe Association Canoe Instructor. Today we are talking about solo canoeing and we are going to talk about the forward stroke, which is a stroke that you use to maneuver your canoe and get it to go where you wanted to go. The forward stroke is a very simple stroke. We start off by keeping both hands on one side of the body. We extend our paddle forward to bow of the boat or we place the blade in the water. Once the blade is in the water, we pull the blade back towards us.
Once it gets to our hip, we allow the blade to extend behind us. We turned the blade vertical. At that point we are using the blade as a rudder. This allows us to maneuver the boat. As we are going forward, this keeps the boat traveling in a straight direction. We will take the blade out of the water, extend it back to the front of the boat, place the blade in the water, pull the blade through, allowing it to come to the rear of the boat, holding the blade in a vertical orientation as a rudder once again, allowing the boat to travel in a straight line.
So, here I will be demonstrating the forward stroke at full speed. Of course, the forward strokes starts, I take the blade, I place it at the bow of the boat. Place the blade in the water, pull the blade all the way through to the rear of the boat where I turn the blade vertical using it as a rudder. From here I recover taking the blade out of the water, bringing it back up to the bow of the boat, placing it back in the water to start second forward stroke. The next stroke we are going to work on is called the sweep stroke, which will allow us to maneuver our boat.
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