You should make sure that you always keep your elbows bent while you are reverse paddling, that way you will not hurt yourself. You should pull your paddle blade out of water about when you are even with your knees in kayak.

You can improve your reverse paddling power by reaching further behind your hips.

Finally, it's important to make sure that you are checking behind yourself and over your shoulder while you are reverse paddling. That way, you can make sure that you are not going to run into anything dangerous.

This stroke is even more important since some of techniques that you will learn by working on it are important in order to learn emergency stop technique.

Nothing fancy about this unit -- other than remarkably easy to use interface. Its not possible to do better in this price range.

The Garmin eTrex GPS works well (superbly well) for sea kayaker. It's waterproof. You can pre-plot a destination if you know coordinates. You simply utilize "go to" feature and eTrex points way.

Like most modern hand-held units, eTrex generates its own map of your movements as a visual tracklog or 'breadcrumb trail'. For retracing your steps ('Trackback' mode) you will see all detail you will ever need.