(By George Gronseth) The Rotated Low Brace is arguably the most important paddling skill a sea kayaker can learn. To prevent group separation, sea kayakers need to keep an eye on one another – including anyone behind you. But when conditions get rough, without this skill people naturally stop looking behind because they fear they will capsize if they look back at their friends. This leads to an “everyone-for-themselves” mentality and there’s no safety in numbers when that happens. By learning how to use a rotated low brace you can confidently look behind in wind waves regardless of their size or direction. It’s also a great stabilizer when crossing eddylines or surfing down a wave.
When learning to brace, you may capsize from either leaning too far or bracing too hard. So capsize and recovery practice is a prerequisite. Before you start, check your hand spacing and orientation to the blades are the same as you use for forward strokes. I’ll define “active arm” as the arm on the side that the “active blade” is on (the blade that is engaging with the water).
The rotated low brace can be done while you are stationary or moving forward, but for simplicity let’s start with the kayak stationary and practice bracing on your right side. In any low brace, the paddle is held below your wrists and elbows, with the concave side of the active blade facing up. Keep the paddle shaft close to the bottom of your life jacket. Your elbows should be bent and your right wrist should be directly below its elbow.
Note when doing a low brace we make do with the convex blade face rather than trying to spin the blade around to use the “good side”. When it comes to holding the paddle there are advantages to being consistent. When you need to react with a quick change from a forward stroke to a low brace, you can’t afford the time to spin the blade around, and if you tried but only got the blade part way around, you could easily capsize due to a diving blade angle.
1) To set up for this brace, rotate your upper body until you are facing sideways and bring the entire paddle over to the side of the kayak you are facing. Figure 2 (You can even scootch around in your seat to increase how far sideways you face.) Hold the paddle shaft just inches above the water and parallel to the side of the kayak. Move both your arms rearward until your front arm is pressed against your belly. Most importantly, the rear hand should be directly below your rear arm’s elbow (like the elbow and hand position used to push oneself out of a chair) , and the rear arm’s wrist should be straight. With a proper hand orientation to the paddle, this body and arm position will automatically result in the right blade being flat (parallel) to the surface of the water with the concave side up. Now let the paddle spin in the front hand until its wrist is straight and comfortable.
2) Slowly lean your upper body and kayak a little bit toward the paddle side (to the right). When you get nervous, quickly start to straighten your rear arm (right arm) so as to make the active blade slap straight down hard on the water as close to the stern of the kayak as possible.
If you don’t hear a crisp slapping sound from the blade smacking the water (like that of a beaver tail) your active blade wasn’t flat enough to the water – before trying again, check your active hand’s orientation to its blade and adjust your wrist position to get the blade flatter.
3) Once the flat active blade meets the resistance of the water, you can use that resistance to push off the water to stop yourself from tipping over any further. Keep pushing fast until your upper body is centered over kayak. Note the kayak may still be on edge but you are in balance.
4) As soon as you start to shove on the water with the active blade, bend at waist and lift your knee on the active blade’s side (right knee) so as to do a hip snap to roll the kayak back to level (see the article on Hip Snap for Low Brace). If you push off fast enough, the active blade only has time to sink an inch or two below the surface by the time you are all done; if it goes deeper you need to speed everything up — especially your hip snap and the timing of when you start the hip snap.
5) Feather the active blade slightly and push it out to the side a bit to get it out of the water and ready for another stroke or repeated brace if needed.
Repeat the above but now try to pause for a few seconds in the middle of step 2 while slightly leaning toward the side you are about to brace on (paddle still an inch or so above the water). While holding that lean, look behind as far as you can. See if you can look at your rear handle then make eye contact with someone that is behind you or check that there aren’t any motor boats coming. After looking back, push off the water with the rear blade and hip snap into balance (steps 3-5).
I use this technique for stability when I’m sitting still in my kayak and want to look way behind to check on slower paddlers or to see if a motorboat or breaking wave is sneaking up from behind. It’s quicker than spinning your kayak to look back, more comfortable than craning your neck, and you’re stable. But the rotated low brace really shines when you are moving forward and need stability either to look back or just to ride out a wave hitting you from the side. Try getting some forward momentum then glide while getting into the position of Step 1. Slowly lean your upper body and kayak a little bit toward the paddle side (to the right) with the rear paddle blade gently skimming flat on the water near the stern of your kayak (no slapping this time unless you lose your balance). Look behind while you glide on the low brace. Hold this lean until your kayak slows down then push off the paddle with your rear arm and hip snap as above. As long as you are moving forward with speed this brace gives you plenty of stability. When the boat slows down you’ll feel the brace getting less solid and that’s your que to push off and hip snap into balance. The faster you go the longer you can hold your lean while bracing for support. So you’ll not only be able to look at friends that are behind you, you’ll be able to watch them for a few seconds and make eye contact to really know they are doing okay. Try this the next time a boat wave comes at you from the side – just lean and brace into the oncoming wave. Done right your kayak will coast in a straight line while you brace. Because your paddle is near the stern, it may look like you are ruddering with your paddle, but if your rear blade is flat to the water and close to the side of the stern it just gives you support without making you turn.
When practicing the rotated low brace, you will learn faster if you do about five in a row on one side before switching sides. That way you can analyze what you can improve on and make each brace better than the one before. With a feathered paddle, it works out so you never have to spin the paddle in the control hand, regardless of which side you are doing the low brace on. However, when setting up on a feathered paddle’s off-side, make a point of sliding your non-control hand, (the rear hand) around the paddle shaft until it is orientated to its blade and positioned directly below the rear arm’s elbow.
There are limits to how far anyone can lean and still recover with a low brace. With practice you can lean until the side of your kayak’s coaming dips into the water and low brace back up into balance. However, that is about the limit of the low brace no matter how good your skill. So don’t try to lean as far as you can when practicing the low brace or you’ll waste time upside down. But just because the low brace has limits doesn’t mean it isn’t a powerful support stroke. Up to the point where it gets awkward to keep your active hand below its elbow, the low brace is often the strongest support stroke.
