How to Do a Stern Squirt in Freestyle Kayaking

Video Transcript

"The stern squirt is one of the first ways to power learns to go vertical. What you need is a good eddy line that comes off the corner of a rock and comes down. That separates the eddy from the main current. Then you need the same principals that you would use for a peel out. You need to have speed coming up to the eddy line, you need to set an angle to the eddy. Your vision is important; looking back toward your stern so you get full rotation and a good upstream edge that drops just slightly into the current. Too much will flip you, too little, your boat will stay flat on the surface. It's going to look like this. You're paddling up to the eddy line. As you hit the eddy line, you're going to begin spinning. When I get sideways right here, I want to try and stop my momentum a bit so that my stern is going to land right on the eddy line. I'll be able to rotate here and sink my stern into those eddy swirls, which will bring my bow up into the air. The faster my momentum is the more I can carve my boat under, and that's really what we're looking for. It really comes from rotation versus from leaning back. The more I can rotate and get my boat spinning into the move, the easier it is for me to make this stern squirt happen. Another part of the stern squirt is I can only sink my edge in while I'm doing my reverse sweep. When the reverse sweep hits half way, my torso energy is gone and I have to keep this spin momentum going around with buoyancy energy by rotating my edge to the other side."