You fellas with yur 20 pound canoes, lol.
Back in the day when I routinely carried an 87 pound 17 foot grumman white water canoe, falling on a port was routine. Part of the routine was attempting to throw the beast clear before you hit the ground. The old grummans never had fancy carrying yokes, so we lashed the cheap aluminium plastic paddles in, using the blades as shoulder supports. In order to get the fit right, the paddles had to be very close, so you ended up sliding your neck between them. Very comfy, until the dreaded slip ejection mechanism was put into play. After one such ejection, my ears were swollen up like Dumbo the elephant, as the paddle blades tried to remove them while throwing it clear.
Perhaps more threatening than slipping was the dreaded "sinking". In this era of featherweight canoes, it is mostly a thing of the past. The heck port between Abamasagi Lake and Meta Lake was a floating bog, the bog floating on loon crap. One mis-step could result in a sinking. I was coming down the trail one time, and a grumman was resting peacefully upside down on the trail. As I attempted to move around it, I heard a muffled voice, and upon inspection, I lifted the canoe up, and there was a poor kid, sunk up to his neck in loon poop. He had held on to the canoe till the bitter end, and it was both the cause of his sinking, and the saviour, as by hanging on, it prevented him from disappearing.
I know we are moving into the time of life when we are afraid of breaking a hip, so it is perhaps more important to practice falling than trying to avoid it. I've had a lifetime of practice. Eject the canoe, aim for a soft spot.
