Draw Me A Circle
Published August 13, 2009 | 
Well here’s another place you can go / Where everything flows
Looking through the bent backed tulips / To see how the other half live
– the beatles
If you ask a new paddling student to simply paddle forward then turn their kayak in motion, without further instruction they will inevitably produce a stern rudder. They reach back with their paddle on the side they want to turn, set the blade in the water, and push out. The kayak turns. I like having students do this, so I can label it and change “a thing they do” into a skill simply through the power of linguistics. It helps them start thinking all this kayak stuff may not be so tough. Heck they can make some of it up without really trying!
The thing is, the stern rudder is so easy that it can be hard to want to spend time on the fundamentals that make it work. This is why I always challenge students to keep their paddle in the same position but make the kayak go the other way. Now we’re talking fundamentals!
In order to make the kayak turn the opposite direction or away from the side you put the paddle in the water on, you will want to do a thing we like to call a stern draw (see, there’s that officious name thing again.) It basically means that instead of pushing the tail of our boat away from the blade, we want to draw the tail toward our paddle, causing the boat to turn the other direction. By combining the stern rudder and the draw you can carve a sexy serpentine path down a wave impressing friends, neighbors, and various species of fish.
paddle shaft is parallel to the hull of the kayak
So here’s the important bits.. The first bit is simply getting the paddle parallel or in line with the kayak. While you can do it without rotating your torso, it’s 100% easier and more successful early on if you rotate your upper body as far as possible toward the paddle. (see the picture above). Twist your body until you can easily set the blade down into the water parallel to the hull of the kayak. Maybe 8 inches, give or take of space should remain between your boat and your paddle. (keep the paddle in fairly close at any rate.) Remember the blade must go into the water in a clean slice to avoid drag which will slow the kayak down.
If you pull that first bit off, and you have some momentum, your kayak should be still moving forward without turning. Keeping a blade in the water without turning the boat is a trick in-of-itself. That’s called keeping the blade “neutral” position.
Now to accomplish this turn putting an edge on your kayak is really important. You may get a bit of a turn anyway, but unlike a normal stern rudder the stern draw is simply not all that forceful. Edging the kayak out of the turn will encourage the kayak to do what you are telling it to do.
Edging the kayak and keeping the arm straight (flexing at the elbow) will turn blade toward the hull of the kayak
Now you simply twist the paddle shaft toward you. ** Many of us can relate to this as revving up a motorcycle. You are turning the top of the blade in the water from its neutral position to one where the top of the blade is turning toward the hull of the kayak. (See the picture) You are creating a bit of a funnel that draws water between the blade and the boat which will allow the kayak to actually turn in the opposite direction. There is a whole hydrological science thing going on here.. but suffice to say it works. Of course at first it won’t work much. You’ll have to spend some time to refine each element I’ve mentioned and experiment with what works for you and your kayak. Amazingly if you can get this to work, you’ll find that boring old stern rudder improves as well.
**UPDATE: To produce a strong stern draw keep paddle locked in your hand with your knuckles in line with the blade edge. By edging the kayak while keeping the arm straight and hinging at the elbow you will in effect turn the top of the blade toward the kayak. – Thanks to JB & Ben Lawry for the pointer on this one.
* Keep in mind that this is a quick bash at a fairly tricky skill and spending a bit of time with a sea kayaking coach wouldn’t do anyone any harm. 
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One Response to Draw Me A Circle
Great series D! I’m just finishing a great new book that I highly recommend: Sea Kayak Handling by Doug Cooper, Pesda Press. The best $20.00 I’ve spent in a long time, well at least on a kayaking piece (so that excludes buying 2 six-packs of Smutty Nose IPA!
BTW — that was $20 shipped to my door from the UK (directly from the publisher) within a week too — as it is not available yet in the US. Breaks down each stroke/manoeuver lots of explicit photos too, similar to but not quite as close-up/detailed as yours though. Here’s a link to it:
http://www.pesdapress.com/Canoeing-&-kayaking-Sea-kayaking/c9_13/p28/Sea-Kayak-Handling/product_info.html