Strategy Page
and racing tips

Scroll down for details on these topics. Or, click on a title from the blue letters below to go directly to that topic.

Winning from the START
Paddling across current
When to power up
Paddles, Carbon Vs Wood

Winning from the START
Jude Turczynski

In OC-1 sprint racing , there is no more important moment than the start and the few seconds that follow. When preparing for your race, get out on the water early. Do your warm up as you check the course for current, wave direction and wind. Practice holding your canoe on the starting line, minutes before they call you up to the line.

If you line up next to the line marker that is on the upwind, up-current, up-wave side of your race lane, you'll be able to more accurately tell where the start line is. This way, you won't bump into the marker/flag if you can't keep up with the drift. And, as you travel down your course, you won't be wasting as much time, effort and energy ruddering and correcting for drift in your lane. If wind/current has you drifting across the start line, it's best to learn to keep your canoe in place, rather than back paddle several feet behind the line and drift back to the line right at the "Go" signal (this works about once in several tries), hardly worth it.

When waiting on the line, keep an eye on the race starter. You should've been studying this person's habits during the preceding races and so will be able to count down to "Go," just by reading his/her body language. Be absolutely certain, you're in the correct lane before they call you to the line. This will be where lots of people get confused, loose concentration on the process, and loose the race before it begins.

When they call you to the line, stop conversing with the other paddlers. You have a lot of things to worry about when there's a strong wind blowing one way, and current moving another. Don't waste precious faculties arguing with another racer over who's lane you're in. You determined that for yourself earlier.

When you see the "paddles up" signal, keep the edge of your blade close to the water so there will be almost no delay in your catch when the "Go" signal comes.

Once the "Go" signal has arrived, your blade should be deep and biting. Each stroke must be both deliberate and quick. Your goal is to get the canoe moving at full speed as quickly as possible. If your opponents have delayed their start by half a second or are slow in getting up to speed, this is your chance to make some distance before you break a sweat. Here, in these first several strokes, skill, luck and alertness may provide you with precious inches that may not otherwise be obtained by training & stamina.

Racing across Currents
Jude Turczynski

In one race or than another, we find ourselves paddling across tidal current or currents of various size, speed and direction. We might be crossing perpendicularly, diagonally with, or diagonally against these currents. In any of these cases, strategy can easily save us lost time and distance.

When we "ferry" across these currents towards our target (turning marker/finish line), we oddly must point our canoe "away" (up-current) from the target in order to travel the "Bee line" between two points (our target and where we are "now"). This pointing of your boat away from your target in order to arrive at your target is called "ferry angle" and is illustrated below.

Click on figure to enlarge.

The actual direction in which the canoe is traveling, no matter which direction it's pointed in, is called "True Heading."

Calculating the perfect ferry angle for any situation is a simple task...as long as you have a stationary object in view behind the target. Like, a mountain or an anchored boat, a piling, a bridge, or a coastal formation. Even non-stationary objects will work when there's nothing else, like a slow moving cloud!...Can't use birds, moving cargo ships or other canoes.

For example, you're headed for a buoy that is your turning marker ("Target") and let's say, "the current is coming from the right." You know that you must point your canoe up-current to the right in order to approach your target. Let's also say that there's a mountain in the distance behind your target. Align your target between you and the mountain...and try to keep it there. If your target "appears to move" to the right (towards the current), then you must increase the ferry angle until you've stabilized the position of the target between you and the mountain. See the figure below.

Above, the canoe must point farther to the right in order to slow or stop the "Apparent Movement" of his target towards the current (to the right).
Below, the ferry angle has been adjusted so that the target remains between the canoe and the "stationary background object."

Note: A stationary object "between you and your target" can serve just as well. But in this case, you'll have to think of the stationary object as the "temporary target" and your eventual target as the "temporary stationary object."

Another Note: Do not allow the ferry angle to be "greater than" 45 degrees from your target. If the current is so great that 45 degrees is not enough, you'll be better off ending up slightly down current from your target, paddling directly into the current to get to your target.

When to power up & Using your power wisely
Jude Turczynski

You hear it all the time in races, "On the next change, ...Power up!" And, a grueling race gets even tougher. As you power up, precious resources are being used up at an alarming rate. Your self confidence is tested to it's core. How do you know the right time to power up? Or, is there a right time? You hear some paddlers say, "you should pace yourself so that you're spent by the end of the race and exceeding that pace leaves less energy for the finish." Some say, "speeding up and slowing down is a waste of energy."

There are a number of occasions when "powering up" can provide substantial gains during a race. Most of the time, powering up will get you tired and give you only four or five feet. Since you can't effectively power up more than a hand full of minutes during any hour of racing, you must choose wisely the moments when your investment will recoup the best returns.

The start is your first opportunity. You have a chance to place yourself and/or your crew in a dominant position early on, so that everyone else behind you is almost automatically placed on the defensive. The faster you get your canoe up to full speed, the more distance you'll place between yourself and those who would take your position. And, just think of that person who is just ahead of you (if you aren't leading), who is as stressed as you from the hard start and who thought you were going to be left behind. Your good start [can] shake an opponent's confidence for a moment...but only for a moment. If you're going to win against a person of equal physical ability, you have to out smart them and out skill them.

In the OC-6, watch your opponent's steersperson to see if they're ruddering excessively. If so, you can power up whenever the steers person stops paddling. Often, this can be several strokes in a row. Every time your whole crew powers up while their crew is powered down, you get great gains for the energy you spend. When the steers person stops paddling, the power drops by 17 percent. When the steersperson "pry's" a rudder against the hull, the power drops by over 20 percent. If the steersperson "Posts" a rudder out away from the hull, power drops by over 22 percent. (And these are conservative figures.) These are the moments when your investment will pay off in high percentages. When your opponent is zigzagging, you can power up to take advantage of their slowed progress as well.

If you're racing into the current/wind to get to a turning marker, the first boat to get around that marker will gain the most distance from the rest of the pack and they'll gain this distance in the period while the next canoe is still bogged down in that wind/current and stuck in the turn. Once you round the marker and are going with wind/current and while your opponent is still moving against wind/current, you can power up here to gain enormous distance against them. Once your opponent rounds the marker and has their boat up to speed with yours, you can drop down power into your hard race pace. It is in this situation that one can gain so much distance that an opponent can not possibly overtake your position. It is not uncommon in most tidal bays and large rivers to gain three to eight boat lengths in this situation. An upwind marker can increase the spread between all boats in a race.

When you see an opponent experiencing discomfort or trouble with their gear, they'll likely be slowing to some degree, and that is your moment to speed up. Sometimes, you can tell that your opponent is in a slow moment where he has lost concentration or is experiencing a momentary lull in energy, again take all advantage of such situations. They may get their second wind just as suddenly.

When rounding a coastal outcropping where you must steer a large arc around an object or a point-break, if you can take an "inside" position while your opponent is paddling farther out in the arc. At this time, you will be traveling a lesser distance that canoe that isn't cutting the curve so close. You can power up here to increase the advantage of your position.

Of course, you can simply pick a random moment to power up, but the difference between your boat speed and your opponent's speed will not be as great as when you carefully pick the right moment. And, you don't want to be spent when that opportunity arrives.

Choosing the right Paddle
Carbon Vs Wood
Jude Turczynski

Some people say, "Wood paddles flex more, so there is less stress on your joints." Some say, "All Hawaiian paddlers choose wood over carbon." Others say, "Carbon paddles are too delicate." Still others say, "Light paddles are more difficult to control in a strong wind." Maybe you're beginning to see where this is going.

I've built "dozens" of wooden paddles myself, the lightest of which was a 14 oz wood paddle with a fiberglass skin that lasted through three years of nearly daily use. I've experimented with differently shaped blades, shafts, grips, various woods and composites. I've purchased and paddled with nearly every commercial outrigger paddle made in the world, both carbon and wood.

Firstly, weight is an extremely important factor in paddling a fast stroke rate and maintaining that stroke rate over a period of time, sometimes hours. It's obvious, a heavy paddle will slow you down and wear you out. Each time you lift your 22 ounce ultra light wood paddle up out of the water and throw it forward four and a half feet to make the catch, you are expending a huge amount of energy to do it...Let's guess that you're expending about 8 ft/lbs of energy just in this single portion of movement (I believe the actual amount to be closer to 20 ft/lbs). If you take 70 strokes per minute and paddle a two hour race, you've expended 8400 ft/lbs of torque for just the purpose of exit and return to catch. If your paddle weighed half as much at 11 oz, you will expend approximately half as much energy. That's a ton of savings....actually, two tons! You can "feel" the difference if you switch back and forth between paddles over a two hour workout. Anyone can notice that they're able to rev their stroke rate much higher when using a carbon paddle. This can come in handy in a sprint for the finish.

Let's discuss the advantages of "flex" in a paddle. There are basically two places where flex occurs on a paddle, in the blade and in the shaft. If you cause the blade & shaft to flex as you apply pressure in your "pull," it's like compressing a spring. A spring is an "energy storage device." You take energy from your body and transmit it to the paddle where it is stored until you allow the spring to decompress, at which point the energy is released. So, you've rerouted and reduced the torque in your most powerful and efficient phase of your stroke, only to release that torque in the exit phase where it's all wasted energy. Some people can notice a snappier movement of their OC-1 when using a carbon paddle instead of wood.

Also, this flexing blade movement causes an inefficient shape to develop on the pressure side allowing water to slip away and fluctuate the pressure/vacuum ratio between surfaces. This causes the blade to flutter.

When it comes to joint injuries, I've been injured more than twice when switching FROM my carbon paddle TO a borrowed wooden paddle, and never when returning to the carbon paddle. I attribute this to a body that was developed under stress of a 9 or 10 oz paddle, and being shocked by a 24 oz paddle. Flex means that you must apply more pressure and have a longer power phase to get an equal amount of energy into the movement of the canoe, as when you have no flex. Am I saying, "You don't have to pull as hard with a carbon paddle."...? No, I'm saying, "Your pull phase doesn't have to be as long to be more powerful."

Many racing associations around the Outrigger world require paddles to be all wood, or mostly wood and this explains preferential use of wood in these locations. In some racing associations, canoe paddles of any material are permitted, and you will find the common preference to be carbon.

Most carbon paddles will last four to ten seasons, depending on use and abuse, where the best I could expect from wood was three to five years. A sharp slap of a wooden paddle shaft against a hard object will usually only dent the shaft, but such a sharp strike against a carbon shaft can crack it and render it useless.

Lastly, a heavy paddle will have so much inertia that wind will have little effect on it's movement in the return to the catch, where a very light paddle responds to every vortex of air. You simply learn to handle either paddle and after several sessions, you've forgotten all about it no matter which paddle you're using. If you have a choice between wood and carbon, it's got to be a fine carbon paddle in the end. A super fine wood/carbon hybrid at the least.

Every builder generally has one rudder available for their canoes...and that's it. Just how important is the shape and size of your rudder to the final performance of your boat?

-top-