Subject: Re: [baidarka] Paddles
From: William Nettles (netttles@adelphia.net)
Date: Tue Mar 15 2005 - 10:47:52 EST
One consideration might be archeological evidence of arm bone rugature
(?) muscle attachment to bone. Aleut paddlers had the most powerful
arms of any population group studied. This must be a factor determining
paddle length.
Will
On Mar 15, 2005, at 1:26 AM, Will Samson wrote:
>> 8 feet seems a bit long to me, 7 to 7.5 more likely. I have built
>> both
>> type and made them the same length, about the height of my
>> up-stretched
>> hand (finger tip length). Though in retospect I think if my GL type
>> was
>> shorter it would be easier to use.
>
> Sorry to keep coming back to this, but David Zimmerly's "Qayaq" book
> states
> an average length for an Aleut double paddle as 244.4cm, or a smidgen
> over 8
> foot. I don't know how big his sample was, but there's a survey of
> one on
> page 79 that's 260 cm long (8'8.5" or so), a smaller one on page 21
> that's
> about 230cm (7'6.5") and a rather unusual looking one on p17 that's
> over
> 260cm (8'8.5"). The Lew Plummer survey puts the Helsinki paddle at
> 8'0"
> (244cm).
>
> In contrast, looking at Gail Ferris's measurements of Greenland sticks,
> their lengths are 225cm (7'4.5"), two at 217cm (7'1.5") and one at
> 215cm
> (7'0.5") - an average of 218.5cm (7'2"). None of these are storm
> paddles.
>
> That makes the average Greenland paddle about 26 cm (10") shorter than
> the
> average Aleut one.
>
> OK the sample sizes are small, but even so the difference seems pretty
> substantial to me, with the smallest of the Aleut paddles still being a
> couple of inches longer than the largest of the Greenland ones in the
> sample.
>
> Widths are also of interest - Zimmerly puts the width of the average
> Aleut
> double paddle at 9.4cm (3.75") while authenticGreenland paddles,
> according
> to Chuck Holst, are seldom more than 3" (7.5cm) in width and frequently
> less. So Aleut paddles are typically 3/4" (1.9cm) wider than
> Greenlandic
> ones.
>
> Anyway - as Peter and Wolfgang have both pointed out, the strokes used
> are
> typically quite different.
>
> My question is this - Should we really be going for the 'as high as I
> can
> reach' rule of thumb for paddle length? I guess the Aleuts didn't use
> that
> rule, unless they were giants? On the other hand Greenland paddles
> have
> lengths that are not inconsistent with the use of such a rule.
> Shouldn't we,
> instead, be making faithful replicas of the paddles they used and then
> figuring out how they might have used them?
>
> Bill
> reproduced outside Baidarka or Baidarka archives without author's
> permission
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