Thwart Position Setup

In this video we got together with our friend Blake Spudman to talk about thwart positioning and setting yourself up a little differently in an r2. Blake has been attempting to bring some theories from his spud into his r2 rafting by sliding the thwarts back in the raft.

Sliding your thwarts back can allow you to take more advantage of your rocker by getting the bow up slightly more. When you are running steeper drops this prevents you from plugging into the bottom of the drop and your bow scooping up a ton of water. Another advantage is that the raft can feel more maneuverable due to less of the bow being in the water. All of this combined allows you to skip over sticky holes and when you do start to get grabbed you will have a lot of boat already on the outflow to help you move through.

The disadvantage of using this configuration is that you can go too far back and if your bow starts slapping wave trains then you will have a lot less control and tracking. Another disadvantage is that the boat can more easily could flip end over end in a large wave.