When I want to go silent I go much slower than the guy doing the Canadian stroke in the above video. I may not have enough momentum to do a bonafide Canadian stroke.
I agree. In the video, he is demonstrating the Canadian return correction at cruising speed, not a fully in-water silent Indian stroke, which would likely be done at a lower speed. I just quickly chose that video because I noticed that he does two palm roll strokes, which are key to the Indian stroke.
Palm rolls themselves can be done not only at the beginning of the in-water return, but at the end of the return, just before you begin the pull on your next forward stroke. I think some have named that variation the Florida stroke. The nuanced variations are numerous.
There is a lot of nuance in these strokes that isn’t quite visible in a video, nor does it fully convey in text.
Yes, for palm rolls and everything else—stroke length, paddle angle, blade pitch, draw component, pry component, paddle placement fore and aft, paddle placement left or right, on-side or off-side, in all four quadrants—the subtle combinations are endless.
The good news is that, with enough years of practice, all of this becomes virtually automatic and unconscious, and the subtle combinations will flow into each other smoothly and continuously. How to make the boat do what you want, when you want, in reaction to wind, waves and currents, becomes automatic as you feel the varying pressures on your boat and paddle.
And to do this with a single blade paddle with an arsenal of forward, turning and correction strokes is, in my opinion, the most sophisticated, difficult and rewarding form of paddle craft propulsion. It becomes aesthetic motion pleasure, both physically and psychologically, and not just a task of traveling from A to B.