When learning proper technique for the kayak forward stroke, it’s helpful to break it down into separate phases. In practice, the stroke is one fluid motion, where each phase blends subtly into the next, but by focusing on one at a time, we can emphasize key elements that lead to more efficient paddling.

The three phases are the Catch, Power, and Release. As we go through these phases, we want to keep in mind the two foundational concepts that apply to all of our paddling: Our goal is 1) Secure the blade in the water and pull ourselves past it (rather than the blade past us) and 2) Use the large muscle groups in our body to power our craft forward. This first article will serve as an overview of the three phases, and future articles will dive more fully into each part.

The goal here is to create a library of short, easy-to-read articles that help you improve your paddling. We’ll start with basic technique, then slide to simple maneuvering strokes, advanced maneuvering strokes, and bracing. Along the way, we’ll also tackle reading weather and sea conditions and how to know when and where to go.

When learning proper technique for the forward stroke, it’s helpful to break it down into separate phases. The reality is that the stroke is one fluid motion, where each phase blends subtly into the next, but by focusing on one at a time, we can emphasize key elements that lead to a more efficient stroke.

When paddling on the ocean, there are several different environmental facts that need to be considered. One of these is the tides. How much the changing tide affects your paddling trip depends on whether your paddling relatively open water as opposed to a more enclosed area, such as a bay, harbor, or tidal estuary. It also depends on the phase of the moon, and to a lesser extend, where Earth is in its orbit around the sun. The complexities of tides can get fairly intricate, but we can aid our paddling a good deal just by carrying a broad set of information with us. What follows is intended as a broad stroke view of tides, and is intentionally simplified to be such.

When paddling on the coastline, or across any open body of water, it is crucial to understand what the wind will be doing, and how that will affect both surface conditions and the travel of your boat. When considering wind forecasts, we have to consider both the speed and direction of the wind.

By 7:29pm, as I lifted my board from the silky black water, the newly-risen moon shone hazy against the dark eastern sky, low enough to the horizon that one could imagine drops of water still falling earthward after its emergence from the ocean. 

The sun had set nearly a half hour before, but as I turned my gaze from the water, I saw that the western horizon still retained more than a hint of the brilliant streaks of orange and red the sun had splashed across the sky as it settled below the Danvers River for the night.  

As we paddled, we watched with one eye fixed on the incoming swells on our left, and another on the large, sharp edged rocks that lined the shore on our right. Ahead of us, the coast swept outward slightly, intercepting our path, while a group of submerged rocks on our right gave warning to remain on an inland course with each wave that tripped and then exploded on the tiny island.

There is no body of water too small, too unnoticed, or too unnamed, to be unworthy of discovery. Paddling a body of water allows it to be explored in a way that brings life and importance to it.

As humans, we find comfort in connecting with others, and for me, there's no better way to connect than sharing an experience that so few people ever get to have. On every trip we run, whether everyone knows each other already or are just strangers meeting for the first time, this connection happens almost instantly.

Life is full of trips that bring us back to our starting point. Every year the Earth orbits the sun, traveling through hundreds of millions of miles only to arrive back at its starting point 365 days later (if we ignore the greater movements of the cosmos, but it’s all relative ;) ). Every day, the Earth rotates on its axis, spinning us through sunrises and sunsets and tides and storms, only to do it all over again tomorrow. Each morning we leave the house, and god willing, come back home to the same place later that day. But each journey affects a change in us. Each year brings new hopes and dreams, each morning a different sunrise. Every time we come back home, we do so a bit older, we hope a bit wiser, and a bit more capable of being the spouse, mother, brother or daughter that we long to be.

Fall is my favorite time to paddle. Maybe that's not true. Maybe the start of each season brings out these feelings, and perhaps in three months I'll be writing again about how Winter is my favorite time to paddle, but it really feels like Fall is my season. Fall feels like the gift of time, a present for the present, when our minds can find comfort in "Now".

And if you have been watching the news lately, then you also know that our country is deeply divided. …And that's why this eclipse comes at an important time. For a few hours on Monday afternoon, tens of millions of Americans will turn their eyes to the skies ….. Watching the eclipse from the water, from the ocean that quite literally unites all continents on Earth, in sight of the horizon where the sky and sea unite, seems, for me, the most appropriate to view the eclipse. 

As I float, the number of times I instinctually reach to check my absent phone for emails or notifications drops off, and I feel lighter. I marvel at how heavy a phone seems in contrast, not in the weight of the metal and glass, but in the thousands of intangible lines that chain us to the rest of the world. I wonder about how much a person needs when on the water. Compared to the guy in the skiff, I needed far less, but compared to the cormorant, far more.

I'm fairly certain that NASA launched the first moon landing with less technology than we use to plan paddle trips.

The rising sun holds the promise of a new start, a fresh beginning, a chance to live today better than yesterday. Being on the water releases us, if momentarily, from the pressures and deadlines that anchor us on land. We sat on our boards and kayaks, each with our own thoughts, but all grateful for the chance to come together and celebrate the new day.

Finding myself upside down in the kayak with my head pointing toward the muddy river bottom was shocking enough. The cold ocean water pouring into my ruptured neck gasket and flooding my (still) too thin wetsuit added a surprising new twist on suffering.

Islands are more often than not the destination for my paddling, when there is a destination. The larger islands are exciting in their own right, but as they gain in size, they diminish in their islandness, and so it is the small ones that I prefer:

Islands of floating sea ice, far too small to call icebergs, and large enough only to hold myself, one hand steady on the bow, as they float down river and out to open water, where they'll eventually melt back into the sea. These ephemeral islands, on whose fleeting structure I am the only person that has ever and will ever set foot, are my favorite.