I watched a Red Rock Wilderness store video on how to do the "J" stroke.

I remember going down the White River in Indiana with my Dad a few times in a borrowed canoe, seeing Great Blue Herons flying overhead. 
When I was in college, I took a canoe class.  I learned the basic strokes, braces, 2 canoe and self rescue, etc.  I then proceeded to use those skills in a few Fraternity canoe trips down Sugar Creek in Indiana, and also a few family canoe trips on the same waterway. 
Nearly 30 years later, at age 49, circumstances came together, and I decided I wanted to do a wilderness trip in the Boundary Waters.  I called Piragis, and they set me up for my first trip, solo, entering Stuart River.  About 8 hours later, I had learned how to portage, how to paddle, and how to get over and around the biggest beaver dams I had ever seen. 
I wasn't real efficient, but I got better as the week passed.  I learned that I didn't like using a kayak paddle, even when Lac LaCroix had to be crossed into the wind.  On my last day, I learned how to paddle upstream and over beaver dams!  (Moose River)  I also learned how great other paddlers are when 2 guys who had dropped their first load at the entry, carried my packs for me on my portage out to my truck.

Since then I have bought all the gear, from stoves to packs to hammock and quilts.  I even found a used Magic for sale in Ohio after looking for 9 months.  I have read about paddling technique and practiced on a local gravel pit, and made about 10 river trips this last summer up to 29 miles one day.
But I learned the most that one week alone in the Boundary waters, and it wasn't just canoe skills I learned.

I grew up with boats so I can't say when I started paddling.  Early teens, I suppose.  I recall a canoe trip on the Whitewater River in SE Indiana (no whitewater on that trip, thank god).  Four people, two aluminum tanks, and lots of turns. I followed Yogi Berra's advice that "you can learn a lot just by watching."  It wasn't pretty but we tracked well and didn't get slammed into the banks.  That was in 1972, a year out of college.

In later years I paddled when I could, doing a lot of trips on local lakes and the Kickapoo River in western Wisconsin with my ex and eventually our kids.  I borrowed and rented boats and continued to learn, slowly, by watching.

Then in 1993 I borrowed a friend's Blackhawk Nighthawk, 13'4" of twitchiness, a dump just waiting to happen.  For two days on the winding Kickapoo River I learned how to paddle a solo canoe without dumping.

In 2000 I finally bought my first canoe, a solo/tandem model, and soon afterwards got a copy of the book, "Paddle Your Own Canoe" by Gary and Joanie McGuffin.  I studied that book - and a few others - backwards and forwards and learned a lot.  I probably unlearned more bad habits than I learned good ones.  I got a Royalex tandem and started doing Class I and II whitewater.  I've had about a dozen boats since then, but I have only five left, two tandems and three solos.

In 2012 I got certified as an American Canoe Assn. moving water canoeing instructor and taught for three years until an autoimmune problem sidelined me, hopefully only temporarily.

My first BW trip was in 2009 with my son.  The learning process was similar: read up on it, listen to people who've been there before, and learn from mistakes. 15 trips later I'm not about to quit.

So I guess the short of it all is that I taught myself through experience, books, and a few friends who were only too happy to help me along.

Fallguy wrote on Nov 6^th, 2016 at 1:05pm:


True that.

Reminds me of this: Years ago one of my brothers in law and I took my son and my nephew on their first squirrel hunting trip. Afterward, I was showing my son how to field-dress a squirrel, and my bro in law snapped a photo, which he then posted on a knife-makers forum he belonged to.

One of the comments from someone up your way: "You know it's Kentucky when a young boy is learning (the messy process) of gutting a squirrel, and his buddy is sitting on a log and nonchalantly eating a sandwich while taking it all in."

- kypaddler

in the early 80's took a pe class with my brother at a local community college. it was fun and informative.  they taught j stroke, diff between lake and river paddling. pull out and catch an eddy. stuff like that.

No training here either, that is because everyone knows the that All Males born in North America are born knowing how to paddle a canoe, shoot a rifle and use an axe. 

I also don't recall any instruction on paddling. On my first trip, as a teenager, I just started paddling. I'm sure I watched and learned from other paddlers, but mostly just figured out what worked. Over the years, I have encountered weather conditions of all sorts. I take fewer chances than I did when younger, but still enjoy the freedom and control a paddle gives.

I don't have any memory of learning how to canoe.  I just know that at some point in my life I could handle a canoe.  I remember when I was about 14 or 15 that I was canoeing with two of my friends on the Enterprise Creek in Enterprise, Wisconsin going duck hunting.  We had a 22 and were going to shoot a duck in the part of the creek that had marsh and pot holes.  We eventually shot a duck.  We made a fire and cooked the duck over the fire.  I had no training regarding white water other than getting on a river and going down with the current.  The Brule River in Brule, Wisconsin has been where I have done the most white water canoeing.

It was Scout camp in the early 80's, Canoeing Merit Badge specifically, where I learned the basic strokes and after paddling freely around the lake at Camp Two Bear in WI, acquired my love of the freedom that paddling brings.  Several trips on the Wisconsin and Kickapoo rivers enhanced those skills and then more down the south fork of the Shenandoah years later as a Scout leader revived that lust for the freedom of paddling.  That led to the first wilderness trip in '99 with Scouts into the Quetico.  It wasn't until then that I really honed the basics and began to get into a rhythm that began to feel natural and developed that muscle memory that ST spoke of.  The Shenandoah has a few Class I and II's and I can read a bit of river, but nothing extensive.  I prefer flat or mostly flat water paddling, but would take a remote river trip with perhaps a few folks with some more whitewater skill and a bit of practice on my part.

pd

kypaddler wrote on Nov 4^th, 2016 at 4:25pm:


But, for all of those years, he still took me along!  For 42 years.  So I must do something right?