Video: Canoe Comfort Tips

From knee pads and thigh straps to padded seats, learn what gear you can use to outfit your canoe for comfort, safety and performance on your next white water canoeing trip in this free online instructional video.

Video Transcript

So, one of the most important parts of being able to paddle well in a solo canoe is having the outfitting correct and you can see that I have a double thigh strap set of outfitting here, I’ve got knee cups for my knees down here, so I’ve got nice comfortable knee pads, they provide good padding and they hold my knees to the outside of the boat as well. The thigh straps, they are both padded and one thigh strap goes down toward the end of my knee and kind of keeps my knee located on the top of the knee cup while the other thigh strap holds my hips in the boat so that if I need to lean, I get full control of the boat while leaning. The pedestal that I’m sitting on is a foam pedestal and it’s nice and comfortable foam. The height of the pedestal is about a comfortable height so its about, it’s probably seven or eight inches off the bottom of the boat and that gives me enough height so that I have some good power in my stroke, but not so high that I’m tippy or out of control. Finally to keep myself pushed forward and into the thigh straps, I have foot pedals on each side and these foot pedals are adjustable along a track and by putting my toe against the foot pedals I can push my foot forward, or my knees forward in this outfitting and that keeps me nice and snuggly in the outfitting so that I have really good control over the boat and if I do flip, there’s even a good chance that I could roll the boat. The one thing you want to make sure of with all this outfitting is that it’s easy to get out of if you flip over and can’t roll and with the foot pedals you do risk getting so tight in the outfitting that you can’t get out of the boat. The way that you get out of the boat is let your foot slide off the foot pedals, and then slide backwards and once you slide backwards, as long as you can slide backwards out of the boat, both thigh straps are just going to fall right off and you’ll easily come out. Again, watch that the thwart behind you, if there is a thwart behind you is high enough that your heels aren’t going to get caught underneath it and you should have a great day canoing.

Canoe Comfort Tips

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