: As you couldn’t resist trying to throw a monkey wrench into the enthusiasm on
: this thread, I can’t resist a reply.

I hope you don't think I was trying to curb the enthusiasm for your boats. Your boats are good because they are good, not because they bear the label "baidarka". They are fast because they have an efficient hull shape. There are other boats that fall under the baidarka label that will not be as fast as your design. They may be good boats, just not as fast.

: Your comparative analysis of the below water hull characteristics of
: Greenland to Baidarka is superficial at very best.

: The very radical difference in hull shape is IMMEDIATELY evident in overhead
: comparison of the two designs.

If all you are looking at is the overhead comparison, then you are completely missing the characteristics important to speed. The overhead view is very deceptive. The fact that one boat ends in a sharp point does not really matter, what matters is how the wetted shape is similar or different. While it seems logical that a boat with a pointy end would perform much different than one with a blunt end, it is not completely true. If that pointy end does not have much volume it is not going to effect how the boat floats even when the waves are big enough to get it wet. You could cut that pointy end off without seriously changing the overall boat performance. You need to look at cross sectional shape and how it changes along the length. In other words you need to look at the whole boat in 3 dimensions.

: Chopping off this and chopping off that and sticking on another bow on and
: saying the differences in below water characteristics are trivial totally
: ignores the VERY BASIC underwater hull fullness carried to the bow a and
: the stern of the baidarka. This fullness continues UNDERWATER because the
: hull section is quite round. Though there are pronounced vee sections near
: the stems these vee sections quickly transform into very full rounded
: sections carried very far foreword and right to the stern, NOT AT ALL like
: Greenland hulls. To suggest the underwater hull would be similar if you
: cut off the overhanging stems of the Greenland boat works for you as long
: as you pretend that what is left of the Greenland boat isn’t 13’ long and
: shaped like a bath tub.

A boat with a a long overhang in the stern, a lot of flare to the sides, and little rocker will have a very full stern especially when the boat has a relatively shallow "V" bottom (i.e. bKr-21 in "The Little Kayak Book, Part 3"). Despite the fact that this boat appears to have fine ends, the waterline shape is actually quite full. With very little rocker and being over 18' long it would still be a long boat if you chopped off the stern. Don't be deceived by the overall shape of the plan view, the shape below the waterline is different. The relatively shallow "V" bottom combined flare side will make the sectional shape of the bottom quite similar to a round bottomed boat. The fact that it is hard chined does not matter much. The below-water shape is the below-water shape and it doesn't really depend that much on the shape above the waterline. Certain above-water shapes make certain below-water shapes easier to obtain, but the shape limitations are not tightly prescribed. A good designer can get the desired result via several different methods. The Aleuts and Inuits were good designers.

: Your comments only display your unfamiliarity and lack of careful review of
: the baidarka hull design.

: I have studied and built baidarkas for almost 10 years now. Though the
: example of baidarka design you site in David Zimmerly’s “Qajaq” book is
: the most widely available source of baidarka lines, I have had access to
: nearly a dozen different documented drawings of native kayaks AND actual
: collected native kayaks at museums. The variation from the “Qajaq”
: documented baidarka has been surprisingly small.

Please don't characterize my knowledge base. I don't assume you are ignorant, please do the same for me.

Just in "Qajaq" there are several examples of "baidarkas" with radically different hull shapes from no rocker (Figure 38), to highly rockered (Figure 24). Long and skinny (fig 16) to short and fat (Fig 38). Deep "V" (Fig 16) to very round (Fig 24). Looking at examples of Greenland designs I can find similar variation. These variations will all effect handling and speed. And the variations show significant overlap.

: The point IS that most of the current baidarka designs ARE based on a very
: few documented native examples and that these new baidarkas display quite
: consistent characteristics.

I think that agrees with my point.

: The higher speed qualities of the baidarka design HAVE been supported by
: papers by George Dyson and others in the book “Contributions to Kayak
: Studies”, by the personal experience of many paddlers using the baidarka
: design for cruising and racing and by speeds clocked using GPS. While this
: may not be sufficient “empirical” evidence to overcome your personal bias,
: it is quite well accepted by those who have paddled baidarka designs.

That is untrue. Even George Dyson doesn't feel that baidarkas are any faster than current modern racing designs. He did one test with Greg Barton that was inconclusive, but with a slight advantage to the baidarka. He just thinks they were darn fast. He wants people to realize how sophisticated the baidarkas were. And they were. His "Form & Function of the Baidarka" is a first speculation regarding why the stories showed them to be so fast. But he doesn't draw any conclusions. He is trying to get people interested in investigating more deeply. If you carefully read the accounts you will see that in most cases the conditions were ideal for surfing. And even I, in my basically "greenlandish" style kayak, have gone along happily at 12 miles an hour while surfing. I'm just not fit enough to keep it up very long. George suspects that surfing is one possible explanation, but probably not complete. I agree with him.

Modern racers can consistently match the speeds attributed to the original baidarka paddlers. (I don't think they are exceeding them) Peter Hunt told me my Razor Billed Auk was fastest, but only when he put the rudder down. Otherwise yours were faster. I don't consider one test by a relatively inexperienced paddler very informative regarding speed capability so I only mention it to point out the pitfalls of depending on such anecdotal data. But it does show a slight change can make a difference. I also beat a baidarka by 20 minutes (10% faster) in the Blackburn Challenge, but again that says more about the respective paddlers that day than it does about the respective boats.

BTW, I personally consider my Razor Bill to have a closer family resemblance to a baidarka than any other kind of kayak. But it is not a "baidarka" so I don't advertise it as such. I choose a specific generic shape to fit into the rules of a race. I could have choosen another general shape but given the dimension rules for the race I would have had problems making it as fast. For a given over all length a boat with a fairly plumb bow and stern (i.e. baidarka like) will generally have more speed potential than a boat of the same overall length but large overhangs. If the rules specified waterline length instead of overall length I may well have choosen a different bow and stern profile.

I don't have a bias against baidarkas, just against unfounded blanket statements about them. It is unfair to the boats, and inaccurate. You can say baidarkas based on "X" example tend to be fast. But to say they all are faster than any other kind of kayak, is just plain incorrect.

: The fact that the environmental conditions are very different around
: Greenland and the Aleutian Islands of the north Pacific obviously called
: for very difference boat designs.

: The more I learn of Greenland, and study and paddle Greenland designs, I
: understand these boats were designed to handle strong winds in ice fields
: and paddling around ice bergs. Speed was not the greatest design factor in
: a kayak that was used often to transport a hunter to wait at a seal’s blow
: hole. Paddling in big seas was not common. I would like to hear comments
: on these points from some of the paddlers on this BB who have been to
: Greenland and have talked with Greenland paddlers as to weather I’m in
: error here.

Greenland is a big island. There were different villages that had to deal with different conditions. This is one explanation for the variety of Greenland designs.

: The Aleut baidarka was designed for open seas, with no, or very little ice
: and big waves. Speed was a highly important design factor as all hunting
: was done from the boat in pursuit of game.

: There is no need to discount or discredit baidarkas because they are a faster
: design. The history of recreational sea kayaking started in Britain. The
: British chose the nearest arctic kayak as their model which was from
: Greenland. Few current modern Greenland derived kayaks display the very
: hard chine of Greenland native boats, suggesting modifications were
: desirable when the design was forced into new paddling conditions. The
: Greenland derived sea kayak design prevails because it fits our archetype
: of a sea kayak through the fluke of recreational sea kayaking history.

: The Alaskan baidarka design is not a better kayak than the Greenland, though
: it may be a bit faster.

I am in no way discounting the qualities of any of the boats. I am making no qualitative comparison at all. I feel that they each one was superbly adapted for the conditions it was designed to deal with. My point, and my only point, is "baidarka" is too generic a term to be used to make performance predictions about the boat. Figures 38 and 16 in "Qayaq" are both "baidarkas" (Kodiak Eskimo and Aleut Eskimo respectively). But, it would be foolish to assume their performance is in any way similar. They are vastly different boats. The fact that their construction style and technique are similar does not mean that their hull shapes are in anyway comparable. They are different boats and should be evaluated seperately.

Your Disko Bay from "Contributions to Kayaks Studies" is a completely different boat from bKr-13 in "the Little Kayak Book, Pt 3" which is also from Disko Bay. It would be a mistake to base a characterization of all Greenland style kayaks on your example because it isn't even completely representative of Disko Bay kayaks. Your example is shorter and wider than the other example, and the bottom shape is completely different. What can we conclude about "Greenland" boats from this? They vary a lot. So again my point, you can't generalize "Greenland" shape enough to use it to predict performance. This in no way discredits your Disko Bay, but someone getting into your boat after paddling some other "greenland" style boat should not expect the same performance just because they both bear the same label.

"Baidaraka" and "Greenland" are good labels for general building style and basic profile characteristics but insufficient as a basis for performance prediction. The most accurate predictor for how they perform in the water is to paddle them. The individual designs can stand on their own, they don't need to be labeled to be good, nor does a label make them good. People would be better served paddling a variety of boats and learning how their shape effects performance than depending on a loosly used generic label to help them make a boat choice.