As long as I’ve got two brand new layout tables for the upcoming dinghy build, I thought I’d take advantage of them to survey the new West Greenland kayak that I designed a couple years ago. Unlike our previous boats, which were exact copies of museum specimens, for this boat I allowed myself to design—but only inside of the parameters of what was done on Greenland kayaks from this location and time period. In this way, I was able to boost the performance while still maintaining authentic shaping.
On average, I only end up not hating about 20% of everything I design, but in this case I think we nailed it. Compared to other Greenland kayaks I’ve paddled it is much better behaved in wind and waves, both tracks and maneuvers extremely well, and it has a slippery speed that quite honestly violates my understanding of hull performance. I’ve also scaled it in 11 different sizes for different size paddlers and so far the boat is getting high marks from people who have built from our plans.
This makes me seriously consider trying to have it produced in fiberglass or carbon fiber, (although only in a single size) and also I’ve been toying with the idea of making fuselage frame version as well, but both of those things start with taking a meticulous survey, which is what I’m doing here.
It’s important to be as fastidious as possible when taking the lines off of any boat because regardless of how careful you are errors will inevitably project through the measuring and re-lofting process so the best way to fight that is just to do your best during the initial survey.
Next Friday I’ll be putting out a video on our YouTube channel explaining the set up here in the entire survey process.
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