Thigh Straps for Seated Canoeing?

[ABT]

I recently had the opportunity to use a borrowed inflatable kayak on some whitewater and I found the thigh straps intriguing. I was curious if anyone has ever given any thought to using something like these in a canoe. I thought I recalled reading a thread on it somewhere but could not find it. They look like they might be usable in a similar manner while seated in a canoe with a foot brace. Thigh straps in whitewater canoeing are very common of course, and go over the top of the thigh while kneeling on a saddle. These go on the inside of the thigh/knee area and hold the leg in contact with the side (see attached pic).

I do kneel sometimes in a regular canoe with a hung seat but I’m always a bit worried about entrapment under the seat in a pin situation. Additionally, I have some seats hung low enough that getting your feet under them is an issue, and I do not kneel with those for fear of entrapment (I know I could always raise them if I wanted). While seated in solos though, my knees are often in contact with the gunwales, and they are somewhat bent from using the foot brace. Seems like some padding on the gunwales and these thigh straps might add to stability and control and still be safer to get out of than kneeling under a web seat. They certainly made a huge difference in the IK. I did manage to flip it once and I came right out of the straps with no problems.

Seems like they could potentially be a good option for those that can’t kneel, have a pack canoe, or are just worried about entrapment. Easy to get on and off while under way and would probably hang out of the way when not in use. Not for serious whitewater use in place of a saddle and traditional straps, but for class II while tripping maybe? Curious what everyone’s thoughts are.

As an aside, those IK’s are much tougher than they appear from a distance. I won’t be giving up WW canoeing with a saddle any time soon, but it was a neat little boat to play with for a couple hours. Just a smaller/personal WW raft almost.

 

[Glenn MacGrady]

To clarify, @ABT is asking whether anyone has experience or thoughts about using the inflatable kayak-type of thigh straps while seated in an open canoe to enhance stability and control.

All serious whitewater paddlers in dedicated whitewater canoes (and kayaks) use thigh straps or thigh blocks of some kind to help heel the canoe and to control its longitudinal rotation in waves, holes and other hydraulic complexities. Of course, most whitewater canoeists kneel.

However, the same hull control issues apply to seated whitewater canoe paddlers in rapids and to seated flat water canoe paddlers in wind waves, which I assume sparked @ABT's question about using kayak-type thigh straps for seated open canoeists.

I have thought about it many times over the decades.

I outfitted my Hemlock SRT with thigh straps even though I paddle it 95% of the time on flat water. As mostly a kneeler, I use typical kneeling thigh straps whenever I am paddling flat water in strong winds or significant waves. Even when I sit in the SRT with my feet on my foot bar, I can configure my buckled straps to cross my thighs for enhanced hull control. Here is a picture of my SRT in which you can see the lower parts of my unbuckled thigh straps on the bottom of the canoe near the double dog bone D-anchors. The upper 3/4 of each strap is jammed behind my adjustable seat drops.



If I were mostly a sitter, I might very well give the kayak-type straps a try. I recall jury-rigging that kind of a sitting thigh strap in another of my canoes.

@Mike McCrea, who is an inveterate sitter, outfits all of his solo open canoes (and decked canoes) with minicell thigh bumpers under the inwales for the same purpose of longitudinal hull control. Here are two examples of his thigh bumper work of the several on this site:

Bell Yellowstone Solo Rebuild

I love custom outfitting. There are dozens of little steps, and a best sequential order that requires some contemplation and planning. I started with the outfitting that doesn’t require a paddler’s custom physiology test sit. A Wenonah adjustable foot brace first, taking measurements from my...

www.canoetripping.net

Seat and thwarts in a solo canoe

Got the OT back together. Stock rear thwart, new front thwart in the old holes of the front seat. New Essex curved seat 9 inches behind the balance point. The seat is about 3 inches in front of the rear thwart. Paddling this week. Hopefully a photo to follow. Ppine, cool beans, looking forward...

www.canoetripping.net

 

[memaquay]

I'm not trying to be a contrarian, just expressing a contrary idea about the necessity of thigh straps in an open canoe.

I'm no white water aficionado, and almost all of my white water experience is derived from tripping in an open canoe. However, I have had excellent white water training from pro's. The focus of those courses was for tripping canoes as well. There were no thigh straps. Seems to me those are things for dedicated white water enthusiasts, not the canoe tripping sort.

I have never been a fan of kneeling, and gave it up completely about 20 years ago. I have run lots of big stuff from my seat, both solo and tandem, and although on occasion I have returned to my knees in some hairy situations, I have been mostly successful as a sitter.

The OP mentions pack canoes......I'm not a pack canoeist, I like big things, but my sense is that one would not be running a pack canoe through rapids large enough to necessitate thigh straps or kneeling. Of course, I could be wrong, perhaps there is as subset of canoeists who play in class 3's with pack boats.

I remember when I first started canoe tripping in my beat up aluminium canoe with my Canadian Tire tent and back pack and fishing rod. I think it was the simplicity of throwing stuff together in 5 minutes and going on an adventure. Didn't overthink things and enjoyed the moment. For me, something like thigh straps for canoe tripping would fall into the overthinking category.

 

[ABT]

I have never been a fan of kneeling, and gave it up completely about 20 years ago. I have run lots of big stuff from my seat, both solo and tandem, and although on occasion I have returned to my knees in some hairy situations, I have been mostly successful as a sitter.

I have probably been more of a sitter than a kneeler myself although I do both, but would say that I have also been fairly successful as a sitter in most situations. I do think that a good foot brace makes a big difference in how solid I feel in the boat, and in my narrower boats I think also having my knees in contact with the gunwales also increases how stable or “in control” I feel. Seems to me these would only add to that feeling as sort of a further extension of that line of thinking (or overthinking, as I’m certainly prone to do). I was really impressed with them in the IK, as lifting or pulling your knee towards the opposite side of the boat really improved control of edging it. A couple of times due to my inexperience I got turned sideways in pretty decent wave trains, and being able to lift an edge of the boat quickly and solidly saved my bacon. Also, it’s natural when you lean a boat to shift in that direction, especially if done suddenly as a reaction to an upset condition. If your knee is resting on the gunwale, it will often pull away from contact with the boat as you shift. With these, it would pull the boat along with you, or at least lock you in more solidly, if that makes sense. At least it seems that way to me.

The OP mentions pack canoes......I'm not a pack canoeist, I like big things, but my sense is that one would not be running a pack canoe through rapids large enough to necessitate thigh straps or kneeling. Of course, I could be wrong, perhaps there is as subset of canoeists who play in class 3's with pack boats.

This is a good point, and I personally have never been in a pack canoe. I mentioned the pack canoes mostly because they have a more similar seating position to the IK I was in, so the straps would function almost identically. I can imagine situations where you could be running class II in them though (admittedly not class III), and I do think these straps could provide extra security from flipping in those scenarios, depending on the class II. Absolutely necessary to make it through? Probably not. Helpful though? I would think it couldn’t hurt. The Northstar Phoenix is an example that comes to mind of a boat that people like for tripping in class II that is available in a pack configuration on the mfg’s website, although truthfully I have never actually seen one configured that way outside of their website.

For me, something like thigh straps for canoe tripping would fall into the overthinking category.

I do tend to overthink things fairly regularly, but I actually enjoy the overthinking to a degree . Probably half my visits to this site are to research things that I’m likely overthinking if truth be told…

 

[Pseudonym]

I do tend to overthink things fairly regularly, but I actually enjoy the overthinking to a degree . Probably half my visits to this site are to research things that I’m likely overthinking if truth be told…

You're in good company!

 

[Glenn MacGrady]

I'm not trying to be a contrarian

You're not being contrarian, but are simply reflecting the experience and preference of many folks, especially Canadians, who grew up using tandem canoes for all sorts of paddling in abundant waters, including solo, rather than in specialized canoes for different types of solo paddling.

I feel like blathering about canoe history. So . . . .

More so and for a longer period of time in Canada than in the USA, people paddled tandems solo rather than investing in specialized, shorter and narrower solo canoes. Furthermore, there are infinitely more real tripping opportunities in Canada than in the USA (and anywhere else in the world). Thus, for historical and geographic reasons, Canadians have been likely to use one canoe, a big tandem, for wilderness tripping and everything else. Frequently, those canoes are Prospector-type hulls, which, as David Yost perhaps sardonically says, were designed to haul 1,000 pound mining machines up and down river systems. Used solo, most who paddle these big tandems sit on the bow seat backwards. Not Omer Stringer nor Bill Mason, who soloed tandems while kneeling in the middle when they wanted maximum hull control, but most Canadians.

Americans turned to specialized solo canoes with centralized seating much earlier and more frequently than Canadians. From 1875-1900, J. Henry Rushton was the most prolific canoe manufacturer in America. All of his canoes were wood (no canvas) in those days, and many of his solo canoes were short, decked canoes with centralized seating meant to be paddled with a double blade and sailed—much like John MacGregor's earlier Rob Roy canoe in Europe. Rushton is also famous for popularizing, via the travels of George Washington Sears ("Nessmuk"), what are now called pack canoes.

Beginning probably in the 1950s, Bart Hauthaway of Massachusetts became well known for making short and light solo canoes, both open and decked, out of fiberglass.

In the mid-70s, Patrick Moore and Mike Galt started what is called in America, rightly or wrongly, the "modern solo sport canoe revolution," which has now been carried into Canada most prominently by Swift.

So also with whitewater paddling in the USA, which is mainly a day tripping hobby due to the lack of long wilderness rivers in America. Beginning in the 1960s, famous slalom racers such as John Berry and John Sweet started designing specialized solo whitewater hulls. All these canoes had centralized seating, thigh straps/machines and flotation. Soon after, in the 1970s, came companies such as Perception, Mad River, Blue Hole and Dagger with solo whitewater canoes. These canoes became shorter and shorter, from 16' to 8' in length and very narrow. Again, all were outfitted with thigh straps/machines and flotation bags.

Even the whitewater paddlers in the 1970s and 80s who paddled tandem canoes solo for day tripping, such as Old Town Trippers, Mad River Explorers and Blue Hole OCAs, did so from centralized seats, kneeling thwarts or saddles, and most installed some sort of thigh straps or thigh machines.

In all the day tripping whitewater clubs I've paddled with beginning in the late 1970s, to the best of my recollection, I have NEVER seen anyone run rapids in a tandem canoe seated on the bow seat backwards. I have known U.S. flat water paddlers who grew up with tandem canoes at summer camps or otherwise, run interspersed rapids sitting bow seat backwards when on wilderness trips in Canada. Of course that can be done by a paddler with reasonable proficiency.

Rapids obviously can be run kneeling, sitting or standing. Sue Burgess, in the 80s, used to run rapids in her OCA while doing a headstand on her central seat or standing on the gunwales.

However, for maximum hull control and to be able to do on-side and cross strokes in all four quadrants of a canoe, the paddler is most effective and efficient when she is centrally seated with some sort of thigh machines. To me, that is indisputable . . . though not necessary to enjoy the many pleasures of canoeing.

I do tend to overthink things

For all of the reasons I've pontificated above, I think you're just thinking, rationally, and not overthinking at all. You will definitely have more secure and effective heeling, edging or longitudinal rotation control—whatever you want to call it—with thigh straps.

If you can afford them and want to install them on a canoe, why not? Do it! Then you can report back your empirical impressions and opinions. We've all tricked out our canoes, vehicles and homes with various doodads. Some work, some don't, and some are in between. You may find the thigh straps to be effective but not sufficiently useful to be practical, or just a hassle. That, for example, is my experience with fabric canoe covers, which other paddlers love.

Different woke for different folk.