Paddling in Comfort

When I began building skin-on-frame double-paddle canoes and kayaks in 1998, backrests consisting of a simple thwart shaped to a curve that fit my back seemed comfortable enough. I sheathed these thwarts in leather, with a bit of sleeping-pad foam tucked inside to make them softer and more comfortable, a device I also used on the gunwales to make carrying more pleasant.

Over time, my interest in comfort while paddling increased. For the canoes I made for sale, I began using a simple backrest thwart with a rim added to the top surface to widen the curved area and strengthen the thwart. Other builders found other ways: the builder Lindsay Lee steam-bent a graceful, wider chair-like backrest and glued it to the forward face of his thwart. Over the years, as commercial backrests became increasingly well-padded and adjustable, I began thinking about ways that I could make my backrests self-adjust to the paddlers. Ideally, I wanted to retain the simplicity of my basic backrest thwart.

The solution I came up with was to make a curved backrest that relies on simple attachment to the thwart by either shock cords or zip-ties, giving it enough play to tilt back and forth as the paddler changes position.