Naming the most important parts of a canoe is fundamental when you want to talk to other paddlers about paddling or about your boat. You'll also need this when you are taking instruction, since the instructor will not talk about "don't grab that wooden thingy on the border of your boat!", he or she will say "Don't grab the gunwales!"

Canoe Parts

Here is the core picture of a tandem canoe, followed by some explanations.

• * Gunwales: the border of your boat. This can be made of aluminium, plastic or wood. The gunwales add extra strenght and stiffnes to your boat.
• * Thwarts: These are the bars installed across your boat. These thwarts are also there to provide strenght in the width of your boat. A special type of thwart is the yoke or center thwart. This yoke has a special form so you can easily cary your boat, having the yoke resting on your shoulders.
• * Deckplate: this is the plastic or wooden plate the covers the ends of the boats. Often they have a drain hole, an elastic cord attached for the bow lines and a grip for carrying the boat.
• * Bow: the "front" of the boat. Although a boat actually doesn't have a front or a rear since you can easily paddle it backwards as well. The bow is the part the person sitting most in front with his face forward. The bow paddler is sitting on the bow seat.
• Stern: The other position in the boat. Here the person sits the most at the back of the boat, facing the back of the bow paddler. This paddler is sitting on the stern seat.
• * Knee pads: if you're lucky, your boat has been outfitted with glued knee pads. Since we're kneeling when paddling, this foam pads add extra comfort.

This leaves 2 more general canoe properties open for mentioning, the freeboard and the draft. Freeboard is actually the distance the board is free from the waterline. Draft is the part of the boat that is submersed in the water. Have a look at the following image.

Canoe shapes

The following image allows me to introduce some of the concepts that are an important part of the behaviour of the boat.

• Flat bottom: what's in the name. The contrast is a round bottom as will be shown in a following picture. A flat bottom has a great initial stability.
• Chines: the curve of the canoe where the sides meet the bottom. Since we have a flat bottom the chines must be somewhat radical. With a round bottomed boat, this curve is a lot smoother.
• Flare: weather the side goes straight up, a little to the sides, or eventually turning back to the center. When we have flare, the side goes a little bit out from the center.
• Tumbelhome: The side "tumbles home" to the center line. The tumblehome is mostly added to the top of the boat to prevent that it would become too wide to paddle.

The following pictures will show more radical features of these boat properties. The first one has harder, more agressive chines and thus a wider flat bottom field. Also that boat has flare and tumblehome.
The next picture is the Esquif Spark, showing a round bottom, no flare but instead extreme tumblehome immediatly from the chines.

A last important property of a boat is the shape over the length axis. A boat can be flat of the full lenght of the boat, or bow and stern can curl upwards. This property of having bow and stern higher then the center of the boat is called rocker.

The rocker doesn't have to be symmetrical on bow and stern.

The more rocker a boat has, the agiler it is to turn, but the harder it is to keep on track or to accelerate.

Strongly rockered boats are recomendable for whitewater. Are you willing to paddle flatwater, you may prefer a longer, flat boat, eventually with a keel line (a rim over the lengt axis at the bottom) to keep your boat on track.