Broach

[Peach Canoe]

dougd-- to be clear, by 'keeper' I mean your canoe has become a keeper or 'hole' by the way it's lodged in mid-stream! I meant no disrespect to you or that nice canoe. There's a classic hole or keeper on the upper Kananaskis River called 'The Widow-maker'!

 

[yellowcanoe]

In talking pure ocean waves downstream is up the face of the wave. The face is that which threatens to dump water on you
Ocean water particles actually orbit as the waves move past
Kayaking ocean is sometimes useful. You quickly learn there is no brace at all toward the direction the wave is going
Now when heading across waves going upwind is there a trick to avoiding that J stroke.
The last thing you sometimes want

 

[Peach Canoe]

Since you mentioned surfing, Peach, I have a question. I've never been in wind waves big enough to surf or cause a broach, but I do some surfing in standing waves on moving water. In that surfing, weighting heavily on the high side as the boat turns away from the current is at least as important as any corrective strokes - maybe more so. At any rate, carving back into the current with an aggressive edging of the downstream (high side on the wave) side of the boat is always required and sometimes all it takes to keep from broaching - or side-surfing, if you're lucky. Is the same principle active in fighting a broach in downwind waves?

Tilting the boat toward 'the high side as the boat turns away from the current' has the effect of freeing-up the bow-- or indeed bringing the bow completely out of the water. Now the oncoming flow is pressing more astern, and the boat will turn back into the flow. This is an off-side or outside turn, rotating on the chine furthest from the direction of turn.

A corrective stroke initiated sooner would perhaps be an on-side hanging draw or a back-paddle.

I think once you're heading down the trough, the principle for managing rotation to avoid broaching is similar on a standing wave as it is on a deep-water wave, except the water in the standing wave could be traveling much faster! Also, there's the powerful rotational effects of the tailwind that may or may not be present on the river.