Getting Around
When It's Time to Punt
By Tamia Nelson
tamia@paddling.net
September 10, 2002
Sometimes you gotta go against the flow. And
sometimes the water's so thin that a paddle just won't bite. That's when
you'll want to punt.
I'm not talking football here. Punting's another way of saying
poling. A punt is a flat-bottomed boat, and punting is propelling a
punt by shoving a pole against the bottom of a river or canal. Newsflash!
Your boat doesn't have to be a punt. You can punt a canoe, too.
Confused? I'm not surprised. Punting is one of those physical things
that's easier to do than to talk about. Words just get in the way. But while
most canoeists have heard of it, how many have given punting a try? Not
enough, that's for sure. Whether you call it punting or poling, it's a
technique well worth having in your bag of tricks. Just ask any
voyageur or Maine guide.
Punting's especially useful during the low-water months of late summer
and early fall. One of my favorite
rivers flows clear and cold out of Vermont's Green Mountains, slices
through a water gap in the hills, and then meanders through a broad,
pastoral New York valley. For much of its course, the 'Kill is a classic
pool-and-riffle stream. There's one problem, though: in dry years it gets
mighty "bony." Your canoe will float in a lot less water than your paddle
blade needs. So if you don't want to stay home on low-water days—and
that means missing some of the best weather of the season—you simply
gotta punt.
Is that all? No. If you live where paddling clubs are few and far
between, or if you get time off from your job only when everyone else is
working, then you'll probably find it hard to organize a car shuttle. Of
course you won't want to run Class III-IV water alone—not if you're
sane, at any rate—but there are a lot of easy Class I-II rivers just
waiting to be explored by solo boaters and tandem teams. (It's never safe to
boat alone, but many experienced boaters bend the rules from time to
time, and most of them live to tell the tale. It's a judgement call.) That's
what Farwell and I did on the river of my youth. And because we were usually
on our own, we'd head upstream from our put-in, planning to drift
back down to our car at the end of the day. More often than not, this meant
punting.
Upstream travel isn't a free ride, but it's not as hard as you might
think, particularly in low water. By working the eddies and keeping as near
to the inside of bends as you can, it's possible to paddle upriver almost as
easily as drifting down. But the riffles—the easy rapids that break up
the straights between pools—are stinkers: the water's thin, the
current's fast, and the paddle blade stubbornly refuses to bite. It's time
to punt (or track,
but that's another story).
The basics of punting are easy, though they're best learned in warm,
shallow (1-1½ feet deep) water, someplace where the bottom's hard and
the current's slow. It's also best to practice solo at first. Stand forward
of the stern seat. (If you're not comfortable standing in your canoe, you're
not ready to learn to punt—or maybe you need a more stable boat!) You
want your canoe to be trimmed down by the stern when you're headed upstream.
Make a quarter turn toward the upstream gunwale—your boat should be at
a slight angle to the current—and grip your pole near the middle with
your hands about shoulder-width apart, as if it were a rope you were getting
ready to climb. Both thumbs should point up.
Now place the working end of the pole in the water near the gunwale, a
comfortable distance ahead of you. How far ahead will depend on the length
of your arms, the length of your pole, and your forward speed. When you're
moving out from a standing start, you'll need to place the pole further
back, next to your rear foot or even slightly behind you. As you pick
up speed, you'll be able to stretch out and plant your pole forward. In
either case, once the pole "feels the bottom," just climb it hand-over-hand
till you get to the top. Then recover—cautious types will do this
hand-over-hand; the devil-may-care will risk a single toss—and plant
the pole once more. And start climbing again.
Congratulations! You're punting.
It won't be this easy in real life, of course. At first, your boat will
swing from side to side. (The remedy? A bit of lateral pressure on the
pole.) And you'll probably walk your hands right off the end of the pole at
least once. You didn't forget to bring a paddle, did you? You don't want to
be up the creek without one! And be sure to wear your life-jacket. (A
helmet might not be a bad idea, either. The "bones" in bony rivers are
rocks, after all. What's your head worth to you?)
You'll notice that I've left something important out. It's a little like
that famous recipe for jugged hare in a celebrated Victorian cookbook.
"First," the recipe began, "catch your hare." After that bit, everything is
simple. Well, before you can punt, you'll need a pole: 10-12 feet of
something light, straight, and strong. Ash was the material of choice back
when punting was a workaday way to get around on the water, but just try
finding a 12-foot ash pole today, let alone the tapered iron shoe you'll
need to keep the working end from "brooming." Good luck! For a while during
the '70s, a small company made a break-down aluminum pole. It was light and
strong, but it was also noisy and cold (in cold water). The junction was
fiddly, too. It depended on tiny, easy-to-lose screws. Still, the "Sylvester
pole" worked well, and the makers wrote the best guide to the art of punting
I've ever seen, Canoe Poling, by Al, Syl, and Frank Beletz. The book
is a campy classic. It's too bad that both it and the Sylvester pole are now
history.
But they are. So I'm afraid you're on your own when you go looking for a
pole. Maybe a local sawmill, metal-shop, or cabinet-maker can help you. Or
maybe bamboo is the answer. (I'm going to try a bamboo pole next year.) Look
hard enough, though, and something's bound to turn up. If you keep the most
important criteria in mind, you can't go wrong. A good pole is light,
straight, long, and strong. It has to be easy to grip, too, with no annoying
splinters.
There's one more hare to catch: your canoe. Short pack canoes don't pole
well, and neither do lean, mean racing machines. The best boat for poling is
arguably the best boat for tripping: a beamy all-rounder in the 16-18 foot
range. Unlike poles, however, such boats aren't hard to find. The Chestnut
Prospector, Mad River Explorer, Marathon (formerly Grumman) "Tin Tank," Old
Town Tripper—all of these will fill the bill, as will dozens of other,
less well-known models.
In any event, once you've caught your hare…sorry, found a
pole…and gotten your feet wet, the rest is just a matter of practice.
Play the river. Experiment with drag stops and pivot turns, and try some
downstream work, too. If you move forward till your boat is a little bit
down by the bow, you'll find you can "snub" your way downriver, holding your
canoe steady with your pole while the river rushes past you. It's quite a
change from the sometimes frantic pace of paddling. And then there's tandem
poling: two people punting in the same boat. At first it's more like a
fencing match than anything else, but once the stern paddler learns to watch
what the bowman is doing and then matches her moves to his, it's like
getting a supercharger for the pickup truck. All that extra
horsepower….
Practice makes perfect, as always. Just don't forget the essentials. Stay
on easy water while you're learning. Keep your pole on the upstream side of
the boat. (If your canoe drifts down over your pole, and if you insist on
holding on, you may find yourself making an unscheduled flight right over
the gunwale.) And hang loose. Whatever you're doing, if you're feeling
tight, it can't be right.
Punting. It takes a little while to learn, but there's no better way to
spend a warm September day than climbing a river, pole in hand. So the next
time the water gets too thin to paddle, or you need to go upstream, don't
forfeit the game. Punt, instead. You won't regret it.
Copyright © 2002 by Verloren Hoop Productions. All rights
reserved.