How to Turn a Kayak: Beginning Kayaking Lesson

Video Transcript

"Okay, my name is Lloyd Reeves and welcome to Expert Village. We are going to talk about turning the kayak real quick. We are going to do two brief things here in 45 seconds each. First is for first timers. You turn your boat to the right, paddle on just the left and if it is not turning fast enough for you, paddle backwards on one side and forward on the other and it will turn really quick. If you are already moving and want to turn say to your left, you can just dip your paddle and your boat will spin around that way. So it is pretty simple. Paddle on the opposite side; make sure you have a good stroke going. For you racers, you guys have it easy. If you are using a wing paddle, the odds are like 99 to 1 that you have a boat with a rutter. Just keep your stroke nice and smooth and use your feel to steer the boat. If you try steering the boat by paddling on just one side and you have given up some of your stroke, the rutter is back there to help you out. Also if you are in an Olympic Boat or down river boat, some of the very skinner race boats you have to actually lean them right to go left and left to go right. So you can use your rutter and tilt the boat and help you turn faster but just keep working on that nice, good and smooth forward stroke and let your feet do the turning for you. "