West Greenland kayak build: Adding seating

Even when lengthened beyond their historic size, greenland kayak cockpits are notoriously tight. There’s also nothing for back support, but unfortunately adding a backband like I do in my modern designs creates an entrapment hazard. (Seriously, don’t put a backband in a traditional Greenland Kayak, you could die.)

I’ve been experimenting with different solutions to make these kayaks more comfortable without making them bigger for quite a while but because my Greenland kayaks are never my primary paddling kayaks I haven’t put the kind of work into it that I should.

One thing I’ve experimented with is a small scoop in the deck beam at the back of the cockpit to relieve the pressure on the center of whichever vertebrae is touching that area. It helps but it’s still not great for paddling for hours.

A much better solution is a small hard ramp like you see below. This supports your sacrum and believe it or not is more comfortable then most cushy kayak seats and back bands. I feel dumb for not adding this to the course and the plans sooner, because it was immediately obvious to me the first time I sat in a racing kayak back when I did that sort of thing.

The seats were just small hard plastic dishes and sometimes not even that, but they seemed even more comfortable then the padded cockpits I was used to. I just never got around to transferring this idea into my Greenland boats, so that’s another thing we’re going to be doing with the redesign here, although it will probably take quite a while to get instructions into the plans and course.

Obviously getting rid of the spine scoop will give me a better attachment surface up top, but I’m still trying to figure out the best way to get this thing to stay firmly in place but still be removable. Velcro? Let me know if you have any suggestions!

Also for anyone who wants to try this before I have any official instructions, the angle that I find works best is somewhere between 35 and 30°. (Or 55 and 60).