I've always been a big fan of casual shoreline hugging paddles on calm evenings which means that if there's a bow paddler s/he is always sitting backwards simply to facilitate quiet conversations and their paddle is only used for the passing of GORP and such.

My wife eventually figured out that if I took a bigger stroke away from shore there might very well be a kerplunk in her future. Once I solved that "might" equation, it made it even more fun for me.