Perhaps the most critical application of blade skills is the one I often blunder. On a recent trip down the Grand Canyon, at the crux move of the crux rapid on arguably the crux river in the nation, I blew my line with a failed brace.

There I was, hovering in the eddy above Lava. It was my first time captaining a raft down the Colorado River, and as the sweep boat for my crew, I was puckered. When the second of our five-boat crew flipped, I ran my turn down the rapid without breathing. It all looked square until I hit the Big Kahuna, the final and largest wave in the train. With my oars in the water in a forward push stroke trying to be a brace, for a split second, it was as though I had crested the wave and might slip off the back side, unscathed.

My heavy backstack, the biggest in our lot of boats, didn’t work in my favor. Stalled out, posted like a hood ornament on the crest of the wave, I had a 50/50 chance of making it. But like an old-fashioned VCR rewinding in slow motion, led by my heavy backstack, my boat began to fall backward into the hole. I saw the sky. I blew one oar and then the other. In a split second, I was catapulted upstream and disappeared into the drink.

I was convinced I had flipped. I could feel the tug of the water on my helmet strap choking my neck and I recall thinking, so this is what a washing machine feels like. But in a flash, I resurfaced. In a trough, I waited for a peak to survey the scene and look for my boat. Downriver and closer to the eddy, behind Cheese Grater Rock, my boat was upright with oars intact rowing itself to shore. I, on the other hand, was farther left, and had to scramble to make the eddy.

What you do with your blades matters—a lot. In this article, I explain the importance of the oar blade, fulcrum setups, and techniques of blade management to the rower’s advantage.

Oar Anatomy and Set-Up
Dissecting an oar and understanding the purpose of each part is a good place to start when analyzing how to best use the blade. From top to bottom, the grip is where you hold the oar, the blade is on the farthest extent of the oar, and the shaft connects the two. The neck is where the blade connects to the shaft. This becomes important when assessing the integrity of your oar for weaknesses. Fractures commonly form in the neck, especially for oars that aren’t one continuous piece of wood but are instead two pieces that screw or slide together at the neck.

The continuity of materials affects the catch, and a rower can feel it through the grip of the oar. The push and pull of the current transmute from the blade to the rower through the shaft and into the grip. This process is not unlike a bird’s wing catching air or a dolphin’s flipper catching current. Think of the oars as an extension of your body. With one continuous piece of wood, you can receive more information from your blade than with a disruption in the material—as in two separate pieces screwed together. In this way, the rower can meld with their oars as much as possible.

Catch and Power Face
The power face is the action side of the blade. A catch occurs when the blade engages the current to maneuver the boat. Think of a parachute in the wind and the paraglider’s ability to steer the wing by pulling on strings. When the power face of the blade is in an active position a catch will occur enhancing the boat’s agility. Shifting the power face into a non-active or neutral position removes the catch. All the angles between neutral and active are also options. Masterfully shifting the blade in and out of a power face direction feels like painting with a giant paintbrush. Two at the same time, in fact.

Open Oar Locks vs. Pins and Clips
If shifting the angle of the power face of your blade feels like painting with two giant paintbrushes, the fulcrum point of your paintbrush matters when it comes to ease across the canvas. In order of most freedom of movement to least freedom, here are the available options.

Using Open Oar Locks creates the least encumbered and the freest system. The oar slides into a horseshoe-shaped lock, and by rotating your wrist on the oar grip, rowers can achieve any desired blade angle. Bonus points if you move your rubber stoppers as close to the grips on the rope wrap as possible so they don’t rest on the lock while rowing. This can impede the information transfer from blade to hand. Nicole Smedegaard, whitewater instructor and professional river guide, notes that it also increases friction which reduces efficiency.

If rowing is like painting and the oars are the brushes as I assert, Bob Ross would opt for this oar mount option.

An Oar Right is a piece of gear that flips into the oar lock opening and prevents the blade from rotating. Oar Rights maintain a maximum power face at all times by locking the oar in that position. Using oars featuring Gilman Grips is another way to accomplish this principle. The ergonomic shape of these grips forces the rower to hold the blade at a constant maximum power face.

Pins and Clips also force the oar blades to stay oriented in the power face position. Boaters might prefer this method on burly runs with back-to-back rapids like Cherry Creek or the Tuolumne River. Pins and clips are preferred in rapids where losing the power face in one stroke could have severe consequences.

I would argue on multi-day, fairly mellow rivers (which is what I typically run), constantly holding the power face in one direction isn’t necessary and takes away from the beauty and finesse of a stroke. Some refer to oar lock aids like rights or pins and clips as training wheels. I don’t know if that’s a fair statement. What I will say is if you want to start experimenting with the full range of blade adjustments, you’ll need to have open oar locks.

One of our five rowers on the Grand Canyon chose a pins and clips setup. I hadn’t anticipated how hard it would be for him to keep up with the other four who used open oar locks. This experience emphasized the nuance of open oar locks and how much more efficient each stroke is when you can adjust the angle of your power face on the fly. Although the rower with pins and clips felt more confident in big rapids, for the hundreds of other miles of flat and slack water on the Canyon, he missed out on the multidimensional experience of painting with your blades.

Blade Skills
Once you’ve decided the best set-up for your rowing style and the river you’re floating, practicing, perfecting and knowing when to implement various blade skills will enhance your efficiency.

A beautiful skill to observe and one that really demonstrates how fluid oar strokes can be (with open oar locks) is the underwater recovery. It’s also referred to as feathering, although I think of feathering as a broader term rather than only applied to underwater recovery. Rogue River guides employ underwater recovery often. The Rogue has a lot of flatwater and because of this, it’s common for seasoned guides to take a stroke enlisting the power face of the blade, then flip their wrist to put the blade in a neutral angle, bring the blade back to its starting position while underwater, then repeat. When done expertly, stroke after stroke, the blade never comes out of the water. This style of feathering is possibly the most efficient way to row on mellow water. It’s also a great option in wind.

Feathering is any movement of the blade beyond the power face position. I think of feathering in two ways. In one, the blade is fully submerged but angled outside of the full power position. In the other way, it’s using the oar blade partially submerged. Here are two examples of each scenario.

Standing up and rowing is a great way to mix up a long day behind the oars and, when done according to your body’s ergonomics, coiling up with your entire body and then releasing all that energy into a stroke can be very effective. The one caveat is that the blade of the oar may be set farther back than the midpoint of the boat.

Traditional thought is that in a forward stroke, once the blade travels past the midpoint of the boat it’s far less powerful or effective. While this might be true when seated, because your body is much more powerful standing up, I’ve noticed that holding the blades at a slightly off angle to the current, almost more like you would hold a kayak paddle in a roll, and pushing while standing creates an effective stroke even when the blade passes the midpoint of the boat. I would consider this feathering.

Another way I feather is as I drop in at the top of a rapid with elevation loss, or momentum, or both, I can adjust the angle of my boat with a slight drop of the blade and a small fraction of a submersion. In this scenario, it doesn’t take much force to get the boat going in the right direction. It’s like the small wrist flick that flows a frisbee toss or baseball pitch.

There are many other ways to utilize a feather.

Strokes
When you start to expand your thinking around the blade’s capabilities, try these strokes for fun and practice sensing what angle fully engages the power face, what angle is neutral and what the in-between feels like. This is an ever-changing energetic interaction with the current.

The egg beater stroke is when you turn the boat quickly by pushing with one arm and pulling with the other. There is also a forward variation where you alternate pushing on just the left or just the right. Try this and see what it feels like when you don’t fully submerge the blades, or if you twist your wrist while you do it and practice underwater recovery.

Some might say a raft with a frame and oars is too heavy to boof, I disagree. The boof stroke may not be as dramatic but it follows the same principle of physics. In terms of oar blades, often the veil of water above a ledge or drop is thin and a fully submerged boof stroke might be unwise. This is a good spot to practice a feather stroke. Ask yourself, what’s the strongest stroke I can create without fully submerging my blade? Is it stronger if I also adjust the angle? Particularly as you fall off the ledge, the angle of water and current changes, thus, so should the blade’s angle when you take the stroke.

The downstream blade is one to keep an eye on. When feathering the power face, you may get distracted and forget that the downstream blade is often the one that gets caught in shallow water on rocks and then clotheslines the entire boat. This could also potentially happen in strong current when the boat is at a critical angle. All the more reason to practice maneuvering the boat without a fully submerged blade. Smedegaard calls this a skim, or skimming.

Finally, if you recall the opening carnage story, the brace is the critical move I missed on Lava. But what is a brace? In rowing, a brace is a move you use in a big rapid or wave when you want to use the power face of your blade to catch a subsurface current to stabilize and pull the boat over a wave or through a hole.

To brace, you time a forward stroke with the crest or entrance of the wave or hole, and you hold the stroke in place. Because in these scenarios the force of the water is very strong, the brace requires having a strong stance or footing in your boat, bending your knees and using your hands and sometimes whole upper body to counter the push of the oars from the water, against your brace. If you’re successful, you won’t blow an oar and you will make it through the feature. Next time Lava!

Oftentimes when we mention setting and angle when paddling we’re referring to the boat’s angle. While that is critical, setting an angle with your oar to achieve maximum power, neutrality or something in between is just as critical. It’s the coordination between the two (the boat angle and blade angle) that command and control the vessel. I encourage rowers to broaden their horizons—if you’re a multiday, big water veteran, consider creek boating (with an oar set up) and feel the difference. If you’re used to bony waters, put in for a coveted big-water multiday permit. And if you’ve always depended on oar rights or pins and clips, a mellow multiday is a great time to loosen the reigns and feel the interaction between your boat, oars and the current as a paintbrush on canvas.