: When our daughters were growing up they sometimes wore these elastic bands
: with cloth around them in their hair. I think they were called
: "scrungies". I have thought that these might work to stop the
: water flow on a Greenland paddle.

Now wait, folks. Turks Heads are one thing. Seal gut is appropriate but not that easy to get in the fish market. Scrunchies are going entirely too far! The Greenlanders I've paddled with don't generally use anything, but there's archival evidence that the earlier folk would sometimes wrap cords or twine --- or gut --- around the paddle shaft near the transition, and leave a few inches of the bitter ends free. The free ends flipped around and wicked from the wrapped cord, eliminating most of the water coming down the blade.

Jack Martin, purist