So just to recap, the kayak pictured here is a West Greenland hunting kayak replica that I’ve been building with students for about 12 years. Over that time it has slowly evolved, so I wanted to build a new one as close to the historic lines as possible to check for negative design creep and to potentially incorporate some improvements. The sheer line is a bit less than the original but I’m very confident that the underwater shape is nearly identical with the exception of 1/4 inch more tail rocker that I added with the understanding that I could compensate for that with the drop skeg that I also added. The paddler position is moved forward 1 inch, the entire kayak is a bit flatter, and the chines are spread wider.
What I hoped to gain from all this was a little more maneuverability and a little more stability with selectable tracking for certain wind and wave conditions.
In reality what I ended up with is a sluggish kayak that is no more stable, doesn’t turn any better but tracks worse. Simply put, it’s a bit worse kayak than the version that I currently teach and build.
However, I left myself some wiggle room to back out of those changes, so with a bit of savage carpentry to move the paddler position back and a strip of tape over the skeg slot I was mostly back to the decent performance of my existing version.
While I didn’t gain any performance with the hull shape (yet) that doesn’t mean that there weren’t some massive gains on this build:
I figured out a rib length formula that will let me effortlessly scale my existing plans into a much wider range of sizes. I dialed in the skeg installation for people who desire a drop skeg. I figured out a new backrest and foot brace system that literally DOUBLED my comfort in the boat, changing it from some thing that I could normally just paddle for a few hours to some thing that I could paddle all day long. I’m obsessed with kayak fit and comfort and even I was surprised by the magnitude of the improvement. I will add these improvements to the building course within one month.
So that’s it for now. Tomorrow I start working on the next iteration.
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