Nothing in the world looks easierYou may remember, as a kid, standing on a beach and watching a couple of sunburned adults demonstrating. You were impatient to grab a paddle and take to the water-and they were talking the thing to death. A canoe is a straight line-surely it must travel in a straight line!
Then you got in and gave it a try. Suddenly it was bumper canoes-a circus of misdirection. Blood pressures pushed upwards, curses rained downwards-and the hits just kept on coming! (Bad enough for kids at camp, but when a married couple settles in for that first canoe ride, the stakes are a whole lot higher.)
Only when the first rush of frustration is over do we begin to pay attention to subtleties. We notice the way weight is distributed from front to back. We realize that, if the paddlers are at all comparable in strength and energy, the one in the stern will have to compensate for a huge advantage in leverage.
If you are the stern paddler, you might try the beautiful 'J' stroke, as taught by many camps and canoeing experts-but your partner will complain about incessant drag. You might switch sides every few strokes, as racers do for efficiency-your partner will not like the constant energy, the attention, and the pace this requires. You might stop paddling altogether, letting your partner do the work-but after the first few circles you will be thrown into the lake.
With canoeing, as with most things people did 'in the old days', the old timers had a few skills we have lost. We can learn. We can enjoy advantages of technology, in lighter, stronger, better-designed materials. If we are patient, we may eventually go as far, as fast, as gracefully as they went.
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