Message-Id: <v01530500ae6676702e71@[206.163.121.44]>
Date: Sat, 21 Sep 1996 19:23:19 -0700
To: baidarka@imagelan.com
From: teleport.com!tahnee@imagelan.com (Tahnee or James)
Subject: Re: Baidarka vs Greenland Kayaks
Dear Mr. Brinck,
I was glad to see your contributions to the baidarka newsletter
this last month when I finally downloaded my backlog of email (I have not
been following my correspondence recently as I have been enmeshed in the
travails of moving to a new house). I am very glad to see your reasoned
critique of the differences between Greenland and Aleut kayaks. It seems
that the majority of posters on this newsletter are so enmeshed in the Cult
of Dyson that they refuse to even consider any other type of kayak as
having any worth. Well--as you surely know--not any one boat can be good
at everything--and my experiences with the two greenland style boats and
one baidarka replica that I have built as well as with the fifteen+ other
aboriginal semi-replicas that my friend Harvey Golden has built has shown
me that every different boat can have its purpose. (Even if the purpose
is, like Harvey's 23'long by 15" wide Copper Eskimo kayak, only to give a
reaaly scary and uncomfortable ride.) My personal favorite amongst my
present boats is a Greenland boat styled after the South Greenland of ca.
1870 in Adney and Chapelle's but built anthropometrically to fit me. The
baidarka I built was a Lowie after Zimmerly's article in Small Boat
Journal. This boat was not a success--even though I tried to follow his
measurements most scrupulously- -because the damn thing simply doesn't fit
me! My feet and ankles give me conniptions after just a few minutes. I am
planning to build another one more anthropometrically with cockpit,
footbraces, etc. sized to fit me using your book as guide to see if I can
like it better--but so far, I have not paddled any baidarka of any kind
that I enjoyed as much as the Greenland kayaks.
I think it is important to fit the boat and the paddler together,
and my style, formed as a whitewater paddler--which means I often use my
skin kayaks to go surfing in, seems to suit the sporty Greenland style
kayak better. I think that rather than passing judgements on which boat
is the best boat of all, it would be much better to figure out which boat
is best suited to the paddler and the intended purpose. Above all--keep
your mind open and keep trying out new things. There are lots of answers
to the kayak question.
--James McMullen