Just a few more photos of the newly re-rigged CMC-IV-375 West Greenland hunting kayak replica. This early 20th century kayak was a steppingstone in the progression of my most recent West Greenland redesign project.
By studying surveys and photographs of the original combined with my own experience of watching kayaks deteriorate for decades I made an educated guess as to the original dimensions based on the artifactual level of collapse. I also nailed the frame together because that’s how the original was built. If I had just kept going with the reproduction this would’ve been fantastic, but halfway through the build in a fit of insanity I increased the tail rocker and added a drop skeg, which is a decision I greatly regret. It made the boat heavier and slower and those things outweigh any possible performance benefits.
In hindsight though this was probably a good thing because it pushed me to move ahead with a total redesign where I was able to significantly increase the performance by mixing and matching features from historic kayaks of the same general location and time period. I also developed a new fitting system for this boat that has completely transformed my experience with Greenland Kayaks, and a scaling system so the kayak is now available in 11 different sizes.
Having already ruined this kayak with the skeg I experimented with forcing secondary stringers into the boat after the fact to increase the secondary stability, which worked surprisingly well.
After that I put this in the pile of derelict boats that is continually growing in my backyard, until it was purchased by a customer who wanted me to restore the historic detail as much as possible. So I re-re-rigged it with these artificial ivory replica toggles and applied as much of the new fitting system as I could.
Surprisingly, just changing the fit and adding the secondary stringers totally changes my opinion of this kayak on the water. It’s a bit low volume but otherwise it’s just delightful to roll and play around in! If it didn’t have that stupid skeg, I would call the customer today and tell them they couldn’t have it.
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