For a really basic control of your boat, you only need 4 correction strokes: bow draw, cross bow draw, stern pry and stern draw. Together with a forward stroke, you can move your boat in any direction, with only 5 strokes.

Every active correction stroke has a braking action

You don't have to believe it, you can just give it a try. Use a stern pry - cross bow draw or bow draw - stern draw combination to move your boat sideways. Measure the portion of sideways movement and the portion you move backwards. The distance you paddle backwards has a great deal to do with how good your correction strokes are.

The other option is to combine bow draw and cross bow draw strokes. In fact you should stay in place, only the bow should move around. In practice this stroke combination allows you to paddle backward, since there is by definition a backward component in the stroke.

This indicates the need for good form correction strokes. The better your strokes are, the lesser the backward part of the stroke is and the lesser speed you lose when applying that correction stroke.

There are some drills listed at the flatwater drills section to make the backward effect  visible.

Stationary and active

Every correction stroke of this list has 2 variants: an active stroke and a stationary variant. Basically the stationary strokes are used for smooth corrections or as a start for an active correction. For the stationary variant you need of course speed, because the water has to work together with your paddle.

Active correction strokes can be used without speed, or when having forward moment to make more drastic corrections.

Paddle stroke fundamentals

Before continuing with the basic strokes, I'd like to bring back the basic components of a good stroke

• Torso rotation - face your work area
• vertical paddle: Imagine an arrow shot through the blade of your paddle. The point indicates the power vector. The closer the direction of the arrow  to the movement of the boat is, the more efficient your stroke will be. (and thus the less power is wasted in a direction where you don't want to go anyhow.
• A good catch, give the blade the time to be submersed in the water. I'd like to think of an instant freezing of the water around my blade. Nu bubbles, no splashes, just clean solid ice is what I want around my paddle.
• Impulse: The more impulsive your stroke, the more power is used to move you and your boat towards the paddle. If you speed up your stroke too slow (or too fast), you waste lots of energy displacing water and not your boat. Together with a good catch, a good timing is crucial here!

Basic position

The basic position is the following: put down your paddle in front of you on the gunwales, the paddle blade towards the side where you want to paddle. Now grab the paddle with your hands at normal paddling location and lift both arms up to shoulder height. The paddle is horizontally in front of your upper body and your grip-hand-thumb is pointing straight up into the sky.

Bow draw

This is one of the strokes to move the bow around. We are starting in the basic position. Twist the paddle so that the thumb of your grip hand is pointing straight into the sky. Now you hold the shaft hand at it's place, and the grip hand will make a half circle, moving the grip-hand-thumb pointing down to the shaft-arm shoulder. Your grip hand is moving from the front of your body to the side of your body!

Now you have the right position for the blade. Rotate your upper body (wind up those upper body muscles) to plant your blade in the water. By unwinding the upper body, you'll be pulling the boat towards the paddle.

Recover the blade by slicing the blade up, out of the water.

Cross bow draw

The cross bow draw is the opposite movement of the above described bow draw stroke. We don't switch hands here, grip hand remains grip hand and shaft hand remains shaft hand.

Start again in the basic position. Now imagine you are doing an imitation of the Queen. Put the elbow of your grip hand in your side, and wave with the grip hand next to your torso. That's the position where you want your grip hand to be. Now stretch your shaft arm while you keep the grip in that silly weaving hand(thumb of the grip hand pointing up) Extra rotation is needed in order to get the blade out over the water (winding up these torso muscles.) Plant the blade in the water and unwind that torso. Recovery is done by twisting the thumb slightly to the outside and moving the blade up and slightly outwards.

Stern pry

With the stern pry, you push the stern of your boat away from the paddle. This stroke is a very effective way of correcting at the stern. However, if this stroke is not well executed, it is calling in a lot of braking action when used as a correction after a forward stroke.

Ok, here we go:

Start in the basic position, point your grip-hand-thump straight into the sky. Now rotate your upper body in such a way that your shoulders are as good as possible parallel to the centerline of your boat, facing towards your paddle side. Now plant your blade into the water, as close to the boat as possible by keeping the grip hand over the water as well and allowing contact between the shaft and the gunwale. Drop your grip hand as low as possible but avoid lifting your blade out of the water (thumb of the grip hand is still pointing straight into the sky!). Use the contact point between your shaft and gunwale as a leverage point and pull in your grip hand 10-15cm, not more. This pulling in should happen impulsively.

That's what it takes to do a good form stern pry

Stern draw

The last stroke in our basic repertoire is the stern draw. This stroke is used to pull the stern of the boat towards the paddle bade. The opposite movement of the stern pry.

Let's tart again from the basic position, grip-hand-thumb pointing up into the sky. Now rotate as you did for the stern pry, except that you don't try to get as close to the centerline parallellism this time. Plant your blade at max 4 o-clock (or 8 o-clock for lefties) and drop your grip-hand as much as possible as far as your blade is still fully submersed (dropping that hand gives you more leverage). Now rotate your upper body to get to that maximal parallel position of shoulders in comparison with the centerline. Try to pull your boat as close as possible to the paddle blade.

Take care of the recovery of your blade, because the chance is there that you slide over your paddle if you do not recover it fast enough. The recovery is done by twisting your grip-hand-thumb a little bit outward at the very end of the stroke. Now slide out your paddle in that diagonally up and outward direction.

Moving sideways: onside

With these basic strokes, you can move your boat sideways, towards your paddling side by making combinations of a bow draw and a stern draw.

Moving sideways: offside

You can move sideways to the offside (other side then your paddling side) by using a combination  of a cross bow draw and a stern pry

Moving backwards

You can move your boat backwards by alternating between cross bow draw an bow draw. The worse the execution of bow correction strokes, the bigger the backward effect will be. You might want this behaviour for now, but keep this in mind when you use these correction strokes for a boat running forward: you'll be braking!

These strokes are the a perfect formula for great boat control. But with a minimum of strokes, one can move a canoe in every desired direction. New strokes an new variations will improve effectiveness and efficiency of  your paddling.