What’s worse than missing your boof stroke at exactly the right time? Not a lot… especially when it’s because your hand slipped after your paddle clipped a rock.
Folks are using a variety of techniques to minimize such grip slip on the water. Here are a few tricks of the trade.
My old kayak instructor friend Barry Smith of Mountain Sports Kayak School in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, showed me the most simple method. Take some fine sand from the river bed and put it in your hand and rub it against the grip area of the shaft in a circular, back and forth motion, causing super small scratches your hand can grip onto. This method can get oils off your hands and even sunscreen (one of the worst causes of slippage). Some manufacturers put shoe polish on their paddles when new for showroom appeal; the sand method removes this with the first trip on the river for a brand new paddle.
If you have a carbon fiber or fiberglass shaft you may want to go the route modern day pros go with (like Werner paddles’ Dane Jackson): the Electrical Tape Method. Yes it can get gummy over time and especially with heat in a hot car, but the grip is pretty sturdy and doesn’t tear up your hands like hockey tape. Every once in a while you will have to reapply, and the bonus is if you use colored tape you can see a black carbon paddle if you swim floating downstream and possibly retrieve it (see Dane talk electrical tape ). One problem with this method is if you have a wood paddle with poly—when removed the tape adhesive might take your poly layer off, leaving bare wood exposed. Then you have to sand down and reapply poly to your wooden paddle shaft.
For wood paddles I recommend the old school paddle wax, just on the control hand side of your paddle. If you can grip in a way such that you know where your powerface is on your control hand, you should know where your offside blade is and oriented. Paddle wax on wood paddles and synthetic works very well. It is a pain to reapply as things heat up but it really helps the hold you get on the paddle. Every once in a while you will need to scrape it off with something soft and plastic like a bottle lid, then recover the area. This also works really well on carbon fiber and fiberglass shafts.
Some new paddles like the Arca works Vulcan have a sleeve that is anti-slip and provides a very solid grip when wet (specifically on the right side or control hand side of the paddle shaft). That works really well from my experience even when contacting rocks. Any ovalized shaft always helps with indexing over the circular shafts that some paddles have.
The new Powerstick Proton paddle by Soul Waterman, brings back the style of the old Seven Two grip with a new slant. These have a great solid grip with a slight squish when pushed on in certain stroke angles. This provides a super tacky grip with no slip issue and functions to alight a paddlers grip in an ergonomic position while placed on a straight shaft paddle.
Bent shaft paddles have always created a more defined spot to grip a paddle and seem to offer the most loose grip option, saving your wrist and elbow from tendonitis. My favorite of this variety would be the Hard Core bent shaft, with the new full circle at a near second place. Each provides a unique feel for the grip which is very locked in, one with a wider length in option for gripping and the other more of a pistol-style grip.
Whatever you do, test out that paddle grip before you step on hard whitewater. I have had sunscreen cause near catastrophe before—so use sand or wipe your hands on your neoprene spray skirt to clear them of oils, and don’t forget the Barry Smith sand technique.