Instagram‘s new video features are giving me serious frustration right now so if you notice videos popping up and disappearing that’s why.
I’m about five days into testing this kayak every day with different modifications on the water and I’ve got a ton to say about it as soon as I can actually post videos to illustrate the things I want to talk about, but for now I think I’ll take a moment to address a common question:
Why this sort of testing is necessary in the first place?
There’s a tendency to think that if a technology was used for centuries it has reached a pinnacle of refinement, and maybe that’s true in some cases but it’s also true that these kayaks were wildly variant across their temporal and geographic ranges, and for the most part the nuance of the traditional shaping knowledge has been lost.
Outside of the Arctic it will never be possible to regain the knowledge of how to best shape these kayaks for seal hunting, but what we can do is experiment with a variety of Greenland hunting kayak shapes to create a Greenland kayak that is simultaneously authentic enough to honor the history of these watercraft, while being user-friendly enough to keep that history alive on the water.
Until now I’ve chosen to focus on near replicas of museum kayaks but recently I’ve given myself the freedom to mix and match between different collected examples for a broader palate of design options.
Having paddled this kayak in seven different configurations now, what is really surprising me is how much small changes make a huge impact on the feel and handling of the boat. Scale is also a big issue here. The same kayak scaled up or down 2% is a completely different boat on on the water.
So lots of cool stuff coming up and I’m going to pause the time lapse until I’m done with the testing phase here and then we will resume when I’ve made my final shaping decisions. Hopefully I can get a video up tomorrow so you can see this thing on the water and I can talk about the specifics of some of the things I’m learning!
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