Subject: Re: [baidarka] Two-Hole
From: Ben Fast (benfast@home.com)
Date: Mon Sep 24 2001 - 03:26:47 EDT
An interesting thread!
Douglas...
What boat (or dimensions) are you thinking about when you say "a racy narrow
low volume traditional two-hole"?
Do you really think that a baidarka of any dimension can compete (all else
being equal) with a tandem surf-ski?
I have a very interesting two-hole baidarka.
About 17 years ago, I bought the first issue of Sea Kayaker magazine, and was
totally inspired by the one page line drawing (Kathryn P. Irerland) of the MAE
593-76, and decided on the spot that I would build it.
I did some calculations, looked at my foot size, and soon decided that I would
never be comfortable in a boat that small, so I re-calculated all offsets to
1.5 times, drew up a set of drawings, and went to work building a 24 foot
scale model of the 19 foot MAE 593-76.
Needless to say, this was a big boat, but my ego being what it was (hasn't
changed much, I must admit), I figured that all else being equal, longer was
better.
It turned out to be a surprisingly nice kayak to paddle in a straight line,
but would have been next to impossible to turn without a good rudder, which I
designed into the boat from the start.
I was able to sprint this boat to 9 mph, and in most conditions it was
pleasant to paddle, but try to turn upwind, and a whole lot of bow got up in
the air, making it a bear to paddle into a sea, which of course is the norm at
least 90% of the time in a kayak...ever notice that?
Some years later, I got older and less fit, and decided to build a more
rational boat, settling on George Dyson's Shields replica. I have had many a
lovely time paddling this boat, but it is definitely not flexible enough to
paddle unloaded in rough water.
For years, the 24 footer languished in the backyard, as I paddled my "sport
boat".
As the years went by, and my children have gotten older, I decided this year
to get into competetive kayak racing, and of course it had to be in baidarkas,
as they are my passion.
I soon found that the Shields boat is somewhat limited by its waterline
length, so once again my thoughts went to the 24 foot beauty. For years I had
been thinking what a nice double it would make at 24 feet long and 22 inches
in the beam, so I pulled off the most of the skin (hypalon over nylon over
aluminum frame) and rebuilt parts of the frame into a two-hole version, and
making some small modifications at the same time, such as a slightly higher
heck beam in front of each cockpit, decent foot braces etc.
I then patched up the old cockpit hole, and sewed the skin back on, amazingly,
a stretch, but it went back on beautifully. I launched it in April of this
year, and was not overly awed by its performance, as I expected a rocketship,
but started to enter it in the Tuesday night kayak sport races that we have up
here in Deep Cove near Vancouver BC. We entered the San Juan challenge a few
weeks later, and our lack of experience (this a fairly tippy double, at 22
inches beam) had us use discretion, and carry 40 lbs of lead ballast, which
made us rather slow. We ended up over an hour behind the top double over the
42 mile race.
I have come to accept that it has not been a particular limitation of the boat
that had us behind, but more a limitation of the paddlers. Since that time,
our performance has continued to improve, and using heartrate monitors and a
Speedmate speedometer, we have been able to develop a proper training method,
and are now approaching the lead high performance racing kayaks in the Tuesday
night races, and have become the double to beat (except of course for the
nights when the races include running and or swimming). These 2 44 year olds
just aren't much good at those, but are progressing well in the paddling. We
are both using carbon wing blade paddles, and no longer need ballast in the
boat. Fully outfitted, it weighs in at 70 lbs, and we are able to average 11+
km/hr over paddles of 10 to 20 km.
We can average somewhat more for shorter races, and were able to max out at
16.8 km/hr in a sprint yesterday during our training paddle. This was on flat
water, with no wind or waves. We can, of course, go considerably faster with
the right following sea, but it must be quite a big sea for the boat to be
able to ride it, as she is so long she is unable to catch shorter waves.
we are planning on training 3 times a week throughout the winter (we can do
that in Vancouver) and will see how we progress next year.
If anyone is interested, I will keep the list posted with progress/results.
I must say that it is pretty cool to show up and beat many serious racers in
high performance racing kayaks with an old home built skin boat!
PS. Are there any others out there who are into racing baidarkas? If so, I
would love to hear from you. There were quite a few baidarkas in the BC
Marine Trails marathon (actually only 10km) this year, some of which did quite
well among the sea kayaks. Our double was third over-all, second in the
doubles, 1 minute 10 seconds back.
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