Pretty deep in the video editing right now so not a lot of time to work on social media stuff, but here’s a quick raw Skydio drone clip of the new West Greenland design on flat water.
Swift, responsive, and comfortable, I am kind of addicted to paddling this thing right now. It’s totally different then my modern sea kayak designs but I like it just as much for different reasons.
The approach I took with this kayak was completely different than anything I had done before. Rather than copying a specific museum example I looked at all the collected examples from that time period and location and used that like a pallet of colors to paint the design, and then just started rapidly iterating with the frame covered in plastic wrap. This approach gave me a little more freedom as a designer while still keeping things firmly historically grounded, and in some ways may have mimicked the natural evolution of these frames which were modified every year when they were recovered with sealskin.
The result exceeds my performance expectations and also what I thought was even possible for this type of kayak. Even though I don’t have time for it personally it really makes me wonder what result taking the approach to other arctic types might yield.
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