Subject: [baidarka] Greenland kayak beam calculation
From: kyak@rockisland.com
Date: Sun Jun 10 2001 - 13:37:02 EDT
>
>Given that the Inuit are short and stocky, while we southerners are
>rather tall and skinny (well, those who aren't couch potatoes), how
>relevant would the Inuit rules be? It seems they'd need a bit of
>tweeking to make them fit our bodies.
>
>Mike
They would. Anthropometric rules don't always translate well when there is
wide dissimularity between body types. I had wondered about this too, and
these suspicions were confirmed by an informant in Chevak.
I know of at least one "anthropometrically correct" replica that just seems
too big for it's own good, and that builder was quite a bit taller and
longer-limbed than the people that developed the original he was replicating.
THe "authenticity" question is one that bedevils the Yup'ik builders I've
worked with too, although in different ways than for southern builders.
Boats however, do not have political, social and psychological agendas the
way their owners do, and need only conform to certain physical laws and
conditions.
Anthropometrics, as I saw them practiced in the Y-K delta, were a sort of
general guide to the correct size and proportions. Midship shape was in the
eye of the builder. The men that know qayaqs knew them as padders, and each
man has quite a bit of auxillary information about shape and size that he
brings to bear when it's time to build the framework.
The men I talked with were quite knowledgeable about the hydrodynamic
consequences of one shape over another, and their discussion of various
options was in full agreement with scientific understandings about buoyancy,
flow, and wetted surface.
This living, oral tradition, the existing qayaqs in the village, even qayaqs
the builder has seen, are part of the same informational package that the
anthropometric rules are a part of, and each has its' place.
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