The Club offers a complete series of canoeing and kayaking courses, from raw beginner to advanced whitewater skills. There are several Basic Instruction Courses given each year to introduce novices to paddlesport. Beginning in late winter and lasting into early spring, we offer pool paddling sessions at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) pool in Newark, NJ. See our schedule for more information.
At a basic course we teach the elements of paddling strokes, launching, landing, and how to handle the canoe and/or kayak on calm water. In addition you'll learn how to carry a boat, load and unload canoes from a trailer or car top without hurting yourself, and lots of stuff about canoeing equipment and clothing to wear.
On our regular trips, if the leader knows that you would like some informal instruction, they will try to pair you with an experienced paddler who can help you.
We teach canoeing and kayaking with the intent of improving the skill levels of all of our paddlers and leaders. In addition to the Basic course, we also have canoe and kayak courses for Novice, Intermediate and Advanced whitewater paddling, solo paddling, and Safety and Rescue. For more details on the content of our courses, take a look at our Canoe & Kayak Course Descriptions.
Our courses help you to become a better paddler, and we have a paddler rating system to help leaders match the skills of the paddlers to the difficulty of the rivers. Our paddler rating system is based on the evaluation of paddlers by their peers - your paddling companions. It is keyed to the International Scale of River Difficulty and we rate paddlers from Class 1 to Class 4. Basically, when you can comfortably paddle Class II rivers, you are rated as a Class 2 paddler, and so on. You get evaluated by your peers by attending courses, and on regular trips, by asking paddlers who are rated higher than you, to observe your paddling and to complete a "RATING FORM" for you. Rating Forms are distributed at training courses, and some leaders may have Forms, but it is best if you have some of your own.
And then paddle well and often.
Many of our instructors are American Canoe Association (ACA) Certified Canoeing or Kayak Instructors, and all of them are volunteers. They donate their time to teach you, because other AMC volunteers took the time to teach them, and they are returning the favor.
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