Human-powered watercraft are watercraft propelled only by human power, instead of being propelled by wind power (via one or more sails) or an engine.

The three main methods of exerting human power are:

1. directly from the hands or feet, sometimes aided by swimfins;
2. through hand-operated oars, paddles, or poles, or;
3. through the feet with pedals, crankset or treadle.^[1]

While most human-powered watercraft use buoyancy to maintain their position relative to the surface of the water, a few, such as human-powered hydrofoils and human-powered submarines, use hydrofoils, either alone or in addition to buoyancy.

Oars are held at one end, have a blade on the other end, and pivot in between in oarlocks.

Oared craft include:

• Racing shell

Using oars in pairs, with one hand on each oar, is two-oar sculling. The oars may also be called sculls.^[2]

Two-oared sculled craft include:

• Adirondack guideboat
• Banks dory, Gloucester dory, and McKenzie River dory
• Dinghy
• Sampans rowed by foot in Ninh Bình Province of northern Vietnam.^[3]
• Scull, Single scull, Double scull, Quad scull, and Octuple scull
• Skiff
• Row boat

Using oars individually, with both hands on a single oar, is sweep or sweep-oar rowing.^[2] In this case the rowers are usually paired so that there is an oar on each side of the boat.

Sweep-oared craft include:

• Coxless pair, Coxed pair, Coxless four, Coxed four, and Eight
• Galley, Dromon, Trainera, and Trireme

Moving a single stern-mounted oar from side to side, while changing the angle of the blade so as to generate forward thrust on both strokes, is single-oar sculling.^[4]

Single-oar sculled craft include:

• Gondola
• Sampan
• Sandolo

Paddled watercraft, or paddlecraft, uses one or more handheld paddles, each with a widened blade on one or both ends, to push water and propel the watercraft.. Commonly seen paddlecrafts include:

• Canoe, Outrigger canoe, Hasamibako bune,^[5][6][7] Umiak, Waka, Pirogue, Shikara, Dragon boat, and Dugout
• Kayak, Sea kayak, Flyak, and Baidarka
• Coracle, Tarai-bune
• Paddleboard

Pedals are attached to a crank and propelled in circles, or to a treadle and reciprocated,^{[citation needed]} with the feet. The collected power is then transferred to the water with a paddle wheel, flippers,^[8][9][10] or to the air or water with a propeller.

Pedaled craft include:

• Amphibious cycle
• Hydrocycle
• Pedal-powered kayak^[8][9][10]
• Pedal-powered submersible or midget submarine^[11][12]
• Pedal-powered hydrofoil
• Pedalo

A pole is held with both hands and used to push against the bottom.

Poled craft include:

• Punt
• Raft
• Makoro

Other types of human-powered watercraft include:

• Float tube
• Hand-cranked submarine (disambiguation)
• Hand-operated cable ferry
• Bodyboarding

• Hand paddling surfboards
• Polling a raft
• Sculling a gondola
• Paddling an umiak
• Decavitator, the world's fastest human-powered watercraft, is a pedal-powered hydrofoil
• Starting an AquaSkipper hydrofoil
• Woman rowing sampan with her feet in Ninh Bình Province of northern Vietnam
• Human powered aqua-cycle water trikes in the Pacific Ocean with Diamond Head, Hawaii in the background.
• race in a wooden sow trough (ge: Sautrogrennen) in Bavaria, Germany (2012)

• Ocean rowing
• Fiann Paul