Subject: Re: baidarka backrests, knee braces, etc
From: wolfgang brinck (nativewater@yahoo.com)
Date: Mon Oct 30 2000 - 12:39:13 EST
--- Phil Ellis <pcoellis@hotmail.com> wrote:
> 'Morning All,
>
> I'm a little confused over the relationship of the
> baidarka's parts as they
> affect paddling position. When I built mine, I found
> that cutting the masik
> to a good shape for a knee brace made it so low that
> getting my butt over
> the coaming required my knees to bend backwards,
> which they don't do very
> well. So I lowered the back of the coaming some and
> raised the masik a
> little and it helped, then last Winter I went the
> whole way and lowered the
> rear deck almost flat, which also made laybacks
> easier. A recent photo a
> friend sent me shows, however, the the boat now has
> way more rocker than it
> should have, which could either be because it spent
> most of the Summer
> upside-down on my roof rack or because I destroyed
> the structural integrity
> of the frame (the deck stringer-cockpit arrangement
> seems to function as a
> compression strut between the stem and stern to
> limit longitudinal flexure)
> by my ill-advised tinkering.
>
Hard to tell, but I've found that boats change shape
in storage. Might not have been tinkering. The
extreme case is boats stored badly by museums - see
for instance the green kayak studies book - Arima ed.
> This Winter I plan to return it to the way it's
> really supposed to be, with
> a masik whose only job is to hold the deck stringer
> up and the cockpit in
> place, a raised rear deck, and a level coaming, but
> I'm curious: is there
> any indication that the Aleuts used the masik as a
> knee brace in the way
> that Greenlanders do? (My own experience is that
> locking my knees into the
> masik makes the boat more controllable, but initial
> stability is greater
> with my legs flat on the floor). What do Alaskan
> Inuit paddlers do? What
> about King Islanders (who, if I'm not mistaken, are
> the only well-documented
> rollers in this group)? Is there relavant literature
> on the subject?
>
> Regards,
>
> Phil
>
I have one baidarka which is an exact replica of the
Lowie Museum boat. My knees are just a little too far
back of the front deckbeam so when I roll, I have a
tendency to fall out of the cockpit. When I'm just
playing or practicing, I slide forward in the cockpit
so my feet are forward of the deck beam that acts as a
foot brace. Then I'm nicely wedged and rolling is not
a problem. My guess is that the builder of the Lowie
Museum boat was slightly shorter than myself or
shorter legged so that his knees would have been
farther forward that mine and his back may not have
touched the back of the cockpit and he paddled the
boat as Harvey suggests, legs flat to the bottom and
back not resting against anything. I find that over
time, I have also adopted the legs flat to the bottom
position which seems quite natural when you don't have
an elevated seat.
As for King Island rolls, the Zimmerly video which was
made in conjunction with the Qajaq book shows the King
Island roll in action - video clip - and it looks like
to do the roll, the paddler slides way forward to
wedge himself into the boat. At the end of the roll,
you see him wiggling backwards so he can sit upright.
In other words, it looks as if the boat would be way
too loose to roll from the normal paddling position.
Wolfgang
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