Force problem

A canoe slides down the muddy bank of a river with essentially no friction, at an angle of about 30 degrees. If it weighs 200kg, what is its acceleration?

Be sure to make a free body diagram, and then divide one of the vectors into components in order to add it to the other vector.

In a scenario like this where your forces are tilted, you are likely to have your cosine actually correspond to your vertical and your sine to the horizontal force. I often use a sketch to distinguish the angles (for which I draw them vastly different sizes, which works as long as you don't start with an angle near 45 degrees), but you can use a geometrical argument with parallel lines instead.