Dealing With Boat Veer

Courtesy of Chris Joosee. Visit his site at ChrisJ's Big Page O' Paddling Stuff.

• Your forward stroke may be too long
• Your forward stroke may be uneven from hand to hand
• It's possible that you're canting your hips to one side but not the other
• It's possible that you're dealing with outside forces like current or wind.

You may be applying power at the wrong time in your stroke:  If you look at the physical mechanics of your stroke, you'll see that it's very difficult to push directly back once your paddle has gone past your hip- your paddle is no longer vertical and the rotation of your torso virtually guarantees that you'll be introducing some directional change to the boat, meaning that if you begin your stroke easy and finish it with a lot of power, you're applying power at just the right moment to initiate boat veer.  Conversely, if you begin your stroke with a lot of power and finish it lightly, you're much less likely to inadvertently introduce any strange directional voodoo into the equation.

Your forward stroke may be uneven from hand to hand: If you're like the rest of us, you're stronger with one hand than the other.  Feel out the strength of your weaker hand and make your strokes the same power on both sides.  Also, pay attention to the angle of your paddle shaft from one side to the other- if your forward stroke is flatter on one side than it is on the other, you're stroking wider on one side, and introducing more veer with one side than you are with the other.

It's possible that you're canting your hips to one side but not the other:  If your boat has chines, play around with what happens when you drop a rail- not only is this good balance exercise, it also gives you a 'keel' of sorts- useful for introducing and/or correcting veer to a limited extent.  it's also good practice to separate the movements of your upper and lower body, so that they can move independently of each other. :-)

It's possible that you're dealing with outside forces like current or wind.  When you pull your boat through the water, you create turbulence- you're pushing a bow wave of water, you're pulling a suction wave behind you, etc.  The goal is to keep these forces in balance from side to side, but it takes very little outside force to upset that balance- notice that 'flatwater' near the sides of the river is actually not still- it's moving more slowly on one side of you than on another, and as such your pressure wave will be interacting with different forces on your left and on your right, even though an actual eddyline isn't visible.

You'll notice that as you try to go faster and faster on flatwater, the boat will be more and more prone to veer- again, probably a function of the design of most boats, although it's likely that as we speed up we do interesting things to our strokes that aren't necessarily good.  Also, as you get that bow wave built up, the forces pushing against your bow get stronger, meaning you end up having less time in which to arrest them easily- once the boat gets into a slide, it's hard to get back into balance without scrubbing most or all of your speed.

So What do I do about it?

When your bow shanks off in one direction, against your will, you've got a few options:

• Go with it.  Act like you meant to go there. :-) Probably not the best thing, but sometimes it's fun.
• Push your bow back straight with a wide forward stroke on the same side as the veer.  This sometimes works, especially with shorter boats... but not always.  Remember, your boat will go straight as long as the pressure of oncoming water is balanced evenly on both sides- and when you're veering, the bow pressure is imbalanced.  Your stroke will have to be powerful enough to equalize the push of water on the opposite side of the bow.
• Pull your stern in line with your bow using a sweep/stern draw:  If your wide forward stroke is not powerful enough, continue this stroke towards the far stern and draw the paddle blade towards the stern.  What will actually happen is that you will pull your stern back in line with your bow.  This is a powerful turning stroke.
• Scrub your speed by braking on the opposite side.  If retaining your speed is not as important as controlling the direction you're pointing, the most powerful option you have is to put in a reverse stroke on the side opposite your veer.