Take a look at this article Posted by: Celia on Feb-28-13 10:01 AM (EST)
if you haven't already seen it. Very good article, on this site, talking about things that newer paddlers often find confounding. FYI, we have the Back-Up device. This is probably the first reasonable discussion I have seen of it. http://www.paddling.net/guidelines/showArticle.html?682