Message-Id: <199710091310.JAA10538@www.onlink.net>
From: "John Winters" <jwinters@onlink.net>
To: <baidarka@lists.intelenet.net>
Subject: Re: Re[2]: KAYAK DESI
Date: Thu, 9 Oct 1997 08:07:52 -0400
Laurie wrote;
>
> I just can't resist throwing myself into this fray of design
> issues....I believe that fundamentally many of the various kayak
> features across the north are culturally based, and less performance
> oriented in the strict mechanical sense. For example, there has
been
> a suggestion that the pointy snout of the Caribou Inuit kayak
> reflected the hunter's desire to emulate the hunting/fishing prowess
> of the loon.
This is a good point and one that seems to be supported my studies of
native boats. While some features appear to be quite logical from a
hydrodynamic standpoint it is not always clear that they adopted a feature
for that reason. Indeed, in my computer simulations of building a
Greenland style boat it appeared that it was quite difficult to design a
poor boat if one just let the wood assume natural curvature (See my article
in KANAWA , Spring 1996 I think) for a discussion of this.
Cheers
John Winters
Redwing Designs
Specialists in Human Powered Watercraft
http://www.onlink.net/~jwinters