JP, no need to risk your National Treasure (canoe) again. There is photographic evidence of me in the stern of your canoe guiding it flawlessly into the dock at last year's Riverfest. As I recall I was employing the rarely used Cross Reciprocal Archimedes Paddle (CRAP) technique.

classic canoes
 

I could think of a story about how Native Americans hand hewd JP's canoe out of a single log from a Royalex tree... But then I'd also have to come up with a tail about how early Bronze Age smiths from the Grumman tribe discovered aluminum and pounded it into a canoe. -Ken