When you’re learning whitewater canoeing, it helps to get a few basic terms down. The front of the boat is called the bow, the stern, the back of the boat is called the stern, the left side, the right side, the thwart is anything that crosses the boat, any piece of wood or generally a piece wood or a seat that crosses the boat is called a thwart, the gunnels are on both sides going front to back and the gunnels provide stiffness for the boat and provide, they also are the tops of the edges of the boat. Float bags and parts of the paddle are the blade, the throat, the shaft and the grip or the T-grip. Now on the blade and this is a curved blade, so it’s easy to tell the difference, the side with the Mitchell sticker on it is the back face of the blade and that’s the face of the blade that’s concave, convex, I’m sorry, convex. The face that’s concave is called the front face or the power face of the blade, so it’s the face that’s going to face back toward the paddler when you’re taking a stroke. The side that I’m paddling on is called the on side, the side that I’m not paddling on is called the off side and that will become real important in the strokes when we talk about on side and off side strokes. So, again if I’m paddling right my right side is my on side, my left side is my off side.
