Kayaking: How to Go Straight - as part of the expert series by GeoBeats. When you are paddling along, it is just like driving a car. You always pick a destination that you are going to go to, and you know you want to go to that destination. It is the same thing in kayaking. If I am going to paddle across this bay, what I will do is I will pick myself a spot on the other side of the bay. And then I will decide that I want to go to it. It could be that telephone pole, or whatever. And as I paddle, that is the direction that I want to aim my boat towards. If I find myself always running to the left, to the right, there are two things I can do. I can pull harder on one side, and that will straighten me out, or I can also just drag on one side or the other, and that will straighten me out. You do not necessarily want to put your paddle straight out, because that is going to slow you up as you paddle. But by dragging behind you, it will make it so that you can control your boat. Another thing that might be important, and whether or not you can stay going straight, is the weight and balance. On some boats the seat is adjustable. If you are too far forward in your boat, and your nose is too far into the water, then what is going to happen is you are always going to be kind of cutting through and and it is going to want to be running from one side to the other. It might mean that you have to actually put a little more weight to the back of your boat so that your nose is running higher. And again, you never really worry about the nose of your boat going from side to side because you are picking a destination up ahead. You are always looking 75 to 100 feet in front of you, making sure that there is no trees or logs in front of you. Kind of like driving down the road in a car, you are watching for chuckholes, or different types of debris that might be in the road. It is the same thing with kayaking. You are traveling across a surface. You want to watch the water's surface to make sure that there is no texture change, and things like that, because you are indeed transporting yourself across the surface of the water. Another important factor that you want to watch is that as you paddle, your blade stays straight through. What happens a lot of times when we are giving lessons in the early beginning is the very first paddle you will stay straight, but then you are not paying attention. Then, by the time you are ready to do your next paddle, your blade is at an angle like this. And it will still catch water and propel you forward, but you are not getting the best efficiency. So, that blade should stay straight through as you are pulling, rather than opening like this. It will have a tendency to want to slice in on you when you have twisted your blade a little too far forward. So, in the early stages, I am forever telling people, "Straighten up your blade. Straighten up your blade," so that you can paddle nice and straight as you do your pull through. What I always imply is that you should at least have your knuckles either even with the top of the blade, or just a little bit more forward of that blade, so that as you pull through it will stay nice and straight.