ISSN: 1946-4657

A qajaq in Aasiaat, Greenland Photo: Adam Hansen

Contents In This Issue, ii Editor’s Letter, iv Greenland Kayaking, Argentina Style, 1 Deconstructing Greenland Kayaks, Part III: The Mighty Keelson—Results of Destructive Testing, 7 Deconstructing West Greenland Kayaks Part IV: Hull Design Part One: Form Follows Function, 21 The “Hand of Pavia” Rescue – Defined, 35 Greenland* Moves Southward *Greenland paddlers, that is!, 39 Adam Hansen Qajaq Models, 44 Deconstructing Greenland Kayaks: Form Follows Function, Part 2, 46 Indexes, 75 Acknowledgments, 88 Summer 2015 IN THIS ISSUE

This issue begins with Joanne Barta’s account of her trip to Argentina in the Spring of 2011, when she participated in the first South American Traditional Qajaq Symposium. She documents her experiences with lively text and wonder- ful photos. Even when the spoken languages of the participants are different, they have the language of kayaking — building and paddling — in common.

Ralph Young again applies an engineer’s perspective to his study of kayak design, which he supplements with mod- el testing. His first article documents destructive testing of two kayak frames — one with a keelson, one without — conducted at the 2013 Delmarva Paddler’s Retreat. Ralph makes the case that the keelson is central to the strength of the kayak frame. His second article explores hull design, and the third follows up with testing of scale models of a variety of watercraft done at the 2014 Delmarva Paddler’s Retreat. Ralph submitted each article to a number of people with experience designing boats or extensive knowledge of Arctic watercraft and provides their feedback and his responses to it. The articles aren’t without controversy, but Ralph’s willingness to report the comments and offer his responses are a model for scientific research.

If you’ve been to one of the Qajaq USA events over the last few years, chances are you’ve seen a variety of assisted rescue demonstrations, among them the Hand of Pavia rescue, a term used to refer to the variation of the “Hand-of- God” rescue that was taught by Pavia Lumholt at SSTIKS 2005. John Doornick and Henry Romer allowed us to reprint their informative article, along with instructions for making an Oscar rescue dummy to use for practice, during those times when a living victim is unavailable or unwilling.

The newest Qajaq USA event, the Traditional Inuit Paddlers of the Southeast, or TIPS, was conceived by Fran Symes and Fern White as they drove to the Delmarva Paddler’s Retreat on a cold, blustery weekend in October 2013. In her article, Fran describes how the idea came to fruition the following May at Camp Bob Cooper, on the shores of Lake Marion, in Summerton, South Carolina.

Adam Hansen, resident of Aasiaat, Greenland, and frequent guest at Qajaq USA events, here graciously shares pho-

T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org ii tos of some of the models he has made over the winter months in Greenland. We are proud to feature one on the cover.

Rounding out this issue are two indexes to every article published in The Masik, excluding this issue. The first groups articles by 13 categories, ranging from accessories to travel, chosen to reflect the content. The second lists articles by author’s last name. These indexes show the great breadth of articles published since the first issue of The Masik came out in 2003.

iii T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org EDITOR’S LETTER

I’ve been thinking about how the traditional paddling community has evolved during Qajaq USA’s existence — how what was once a far-flung group of paddlers linked by the Qajaq USA forum, the Delmarva Paddler’s Retreat, and the

Masik has become connected through Facebook, personal and business websites, and numerous Qajaq USA events.

Editor Bobby Curtis’s wonderful first issues of the Masik captured the enthusiasm of builders and rollers who wanted to share their knowledge, back when there weren’t any DVDs or YouTube videos detailing all the competition rolls and rope maneuvers. Later issues offered book reviews and interviews with people who had, and have, strong con- nections to Greenland kayaking, as well as personal reflections on individual kayaks and analyses of kayak design.

The upside of this is, with so much information readily available via the World Wide Web, anyone having an Internet connection has unprecedented access to knowledge that 15 years ago required travel to get. And the Qajaq USA forum archives are a more focused resource, having over a decade’s worth of Greenland-kayak-related information available via the search function.

The downside to this is that both the Masik and the forum seem less vital parts of the traditional paddling commu- nity than they once were. From my perspective as editor, content has been harder to come by. I used to solicit a few articles per issue, and several unsolicited ones would be sent to me. This issue isn’t an exception, but the difference is that what used to take a few months to gather has taken over a year. At the same time, the number of posts on the forum is down, perhaps because many building and paddling techniques have been so well described on the forum itself or elsewhere, there just isn’t as much to talk about. Or perhaps these conversations are still going on, but on

Facebook and other websites.

On the other hand, there are now six Qajaq USA sanctioned events: Delmarva Paddler’s Retreat, SSTIKS (South

Sound Traditional Inuit Kayaking Symposium), TIPS (Traditional Inuit Paddlers of the Southeast), HRGF (Hudson River

Greenland Festival), Michigan Training Camp, and Traditional Paddlers Gathering — which suggests that the tradi- tional paddling community is healthy and growing.

T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org iv So how does the Masik stay relevant? I think that it needs to be published more frequently and be more connected to social media to better capture events as they happen. What it will look like will be up to the next editor, as this is my last issue.

I’m proud to have been a part of the Masik these last ten years. Working on it has been more satisfying than nearly everything I’ve done professionally. I’ve especially enjoyed collaborating with the authors — it’s difficult to express how grateful I am to work with people who truly care about their subjects, except to say that their passion has been inspiring.

In closing, I’d like to say thank you to Bobby Curtis and Tamara Hanks, the Masik’s first editor and art director, whose standards guided me; the art directors I’ve worked with, Thomas Duncan, Alison Sigethy, and Helen Wilson, each of whom put their own stamp on the design of the Masik; and proofreaders Bill Price, Wes Ostertag, Jane Taylor,

Alison Sigethy, Len Thunberg, Bonita Martin, Helen Wilson, Ginger Travis, and Tracy Coon, all of whom improved the articles they read.

My wife, Alison, our friend James Song, and I went to Greenland for the competition in 2006. Near the end of our stay, our new friend Najannguaq said, “I won’t say goodbye because maybe I’ll see you again.” To everyone who reads this, these are my thoughts as well.

Qujanaq,

Tom Milani

May 2015

v T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org NEWSLETTER o f QAJAQ USA — t h e AMERICAN CHAPTER o f Q A A N N AT K AT T U U F I AT

Greenland Kayaking, Argentina Style by Joanne Barta

Background

In the spring of 2011 I traveled to Argentina to participate in the first South American Traditional Qajaq Symposium.

I had heard about the event, or plans for such an event, about six months before that when my friend, Don Beale, was invited to teach a paddle-carving class there. There was to be a week-long class building skin-on-frame kay- aks, led by Eiichi Ito from Japan; ropes and rolling sessions taught by Dubside; and an ACA Level 3 IDW and ICE (an instructor development workshop and instructor certification exam that is part of the American Canoe Association series of instruction; (see www.americancanoe.org for more information) led by Christian Fuchs and Fabio Raimo.

Then a large celebration on Saturday and Sunday to showcase the kayaks, paddles, skills learned, and of course lots of fabulous food. T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org 1 The event was organized by Rony Maier, with support from Paul Deiner. Rony had traveled two years before to at- tend The LoCo Round Up, a week-long paddling symposium hosted by Ginni Callahan and Columbia River Kayaking in Skamokawa, Washington. He returned to Argentina inspired.

Here was an incredible opportunity for me to do the two things I most like doing: traditional paddling and travel.

What’s more amazing is that the symposium exactly coincided with my elementary school’s spring break! It seemed meant to be.

The symposium was held at a beach along the Las Aranas river, a branch of the Parana River, in the town of Valle Ma- ria, a few hours’ drive northeast of Buenos Aries. The Parana river is wide and warm, with a very fine silt suspended in the water giving it a chocolate color. One day it would be flat, the next day white caps would provide some excite- ment for paddlers. I was met at the airport by two avid paddlers and their kayaks. They drove us to the park and gave us tents. My tent was near the group from Rio Mistico, who were taking their ICE. Every morning they would be up about six, drinking yerba mate and nibbling on fruit and dulce leche (think caramel candy) on saltines. These folks don’t eat breakfast. But daily a multitalented man in a white truck arrived selling bread, cheese, salami, and jam. I bought these as well as pastries from the small store to share with my new friends. They, knowing how North

Americans love their coffee, bought Nescafe for me. We would spend an hour or so around the concrete picnic table eating, drinking, making jokes. Most of them spoke Spanish, English, and Portuguese.

Work Begins

Meanwhile, Eiichi was at the community shelter that doubled as wood shop and dining hall. His class of eight students began each day at 8 a.m. A chalk board outlined the plan for the day, complete with drawings. Everyone brought their own tools, but sharing was the norm. When I arrived they had been hard at work for just one day. The gunwales were sprung and deck beams were fitted. There was a table with snacks. Eiichi brought crackers and sea- weed from Japan to share. Others brought cookies, cheese, and sausage. And of course, there was yerba mate.

That week there were 25 of us working on kayaks, preparing and carving paddles, or training for the ICE. At 1 p.m. each day we stopped for lunch. We sat at one long table. Chefs cooked and served a variety of truly delicious meals for us: beef ribs with potatoes; broiled fish; pasta with meatballs; roasted chicken. The yerba mate gave way to quart bottles of beer, which we bought at the park store and shared. We would dine for two hours, then return to work.

2 T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org Dinner happened in the same way: work stopped about 9 p.m., and dinner was served about 10 p.m. Again, we all sat together at one long table and ate, drank, laughed, and told stories till well after midnight.

As the days unfolded I learned more about how this first-ever traditional kayak symposium came to be. Several people with different skills This man would arrive daily with bread, cheese, salami and jam. collaborated. Carlos Martinez had built two skin-on-frame kayaks before and had tools, and Anibel had built a Yost-designed boat (see yostwerks.com). Julio is a graphic designer and physical education instructor at the college;

Leo from Brasil had photo-journalism skills.

Pato quietly worked behind the scenes to see to the many details. Together, they created and managed the symposium that would draw over 100 people to its final celebration. The plan for the day was quite clear.

In this way, it reminded me of SSTIKS, so much positive energy and collaboration, a common vision and the desire to be inclusive. There was such a strong sense of community. Everyone was welcomed and a part of the activities.

Challenges…and Meeting Them

The week was not without its challenges. Julio,

Don, and I were tasked with building steam boxes for bending the ribs. We got wood Julio enjoys some quality time with his daughter.

T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org 3 from a local flooring manufacturer. Finding

something to hold the water and then heat

it to make the steam encouraged us to think

creatively. We found a Mercedes muffler, which

worked nicely, then built a fire under that. Leo,

not wanting to waste a good fire, taught me to

roast cheese on a stick, sort of a cross between

marshmallows and fondue.

Carlos, Don and Rony hard at work in the woodshop. There were other challenges that week, some

from learning a culture new to me, some from

my budding Spanish skills, and some from not

having the tools and extravagantly equipped

hardware stores we take for granted in the

United States. Our South American friends

compensate with creative and surprising

problem-solving skills, have an ability to adapt

to almost anything, and communicate in a

variety of languages. Paddle carving.

That same flooring manufacturer invited Don,

Rony, and Carlos Martinez to use his shop

and equipment after hours to cut the paddle

blanks. We would go pick through his pile of

wood to find the best pieces, then lay out and

mark them according to each student’s dimen-

sions. Then, the shop owner and Don would

use the giant planer and band saw to cut the

blanks. Although neither of them spoke the

Happy paddle carvers.

4 T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org other’s language, they shared the common un- derstanding of a wood shop. Later, we would load it all onto Rony’s Land Rover and drive the five miles back to the park where the carving class was held.

It is expensive to import things to Argentina.

For example, a $400 Werner paddle would cost

$1200 there due to import tax. So kayaking is The classroom. not widely available. But skin boats, plywood boats, and Greenland paddles are of interest because they are affordable and the materials are accessible for people to build their own kayaks that fit properly.

There were enough kayaks that weekend to share—plastic, fiberglass, and skin-on-frame. On Saturday and Sunday people came to observe rolling and ropes demonstrations, try out a kayak, simply visit, and, of course, enjoy a meal together. All day the multitalented man in the white truck tended a side of beef pitched over a large fire to cook slowly. To pass the time while the beef cooked, he played guitar and sang. People joined in the singing, and children danced.

The final night of the symposium one long table stretched to seat over 100 people. It was important that we all sat together. A large wok held an enormous amount of paella, a rice and chicken dish. Following dinner, Rony read a

proclamation from the Mayor, honoring the

event and its organizers. Then Dubside was to

show a film he’d taken of the National Games

in Greenland. Technical difficulties erupted:

the projector failed. Another challenge and

another problem solved in a creative way. A

chair was placed on top of a table. Someone’s

laptop with a 13 inch screen set on top of the

chair. More than 100 people crowded intently

The hard work paid off.

T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org 5 around that laptop to watch Dubside’s film. Music, singing, and picture-taking followed and continued long into the night.

I felt so warmly welcomed, instantly a part of them, and grateful for the opportunity afforded me to participate. The week ended predictably too soon. Our goodbyes were said with hugs, hasta luegos, and many, many photos taken together.

Postscript

Since the symposium I have gained a dozen or so amigos on Facebook. Carlos Martinez is organizing an ACA club in Argentina and has taught three paddle-carving classes. Julio is making and marketing a new line of PFDs and tow belts, still hoping to entice some builders to help him build a small fleet of wood kayaks for his students. Leo is in the planning stages of hosting a symposium in Brasil. This spring there are two kayak symposiums scheduled in

Chile. And I am hopeful that we will one day invite our South American friends to our qajaq events.

Biography

Joanne Barta is a kayaker based in Milwaukie, Oregon, and loves paddling in new places. She is an organizer for the South Sound Traditional Inuit Kayak Symposium (SSTIKS, Washington State in June). She is a Positive Behavior

Support Coach for Portland Public Schools, and she teaches kayaking for the Oregon Ocean Paddling Society and

Portland Kayak Company.

6 T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org Deconstructing Greenland Kayaks, Part III: The Mighty Keelson—Results of Destructive Testing By Ralph C. Young

The basic premise of the “mighty keelson” (2013 Masik) was that the diminutive keelson on a West Greenland kayak contributes significant strength to the kayak frame. The keelson and ribs account for approximately 20% of the total mass of a kayak frame, yet my analysis suggested that they contributed approximately 50% of the strength of the frame. The method of attaching the keelson to the gunwales at the bow and stern strongly suggests that the Inuit were well aware of the forces imposed on the keelson and engineered solutions to handle the loads. Analysis and theory are one thing, but facts are facts, so I built two identical kayak frames, one with ribs and a keelson, and one without, and destructively tested both frames by loading the middle with sandbags while supporting either end. The testing took place at the Delmarva Paddler’s Retreat in October 2013.

Figure 1. Test methodology.

The frames were tested by placing 50 lb (23 kg) sandbags directly on top of the cockpit. We measured the deflection of the frame after each sandbag was placed on the frame until the frame collapsed.

Kayak Frame Details The kayak frames were built to the specifications, dimensions, and assembly details outlined in H.C. Petersen’s Instruc- tion in Kayak Building, using the straight gunwale style. I chose this design because Petersen provides detailed dimen- sions for all the frame members, as well as detailed instructions on assembling the frame. Following Petersen’s direc- tions, you can use commercially available lumber and traditional building methods to construct a replica of a mid-20th century West Greenland Kayak rooted in traditional design.

For lumber I purchased four 16’ by 10’ boards of Southern pine from a local sawmill. The wood truly was run of the mill—coarse grained and full of knots. I bought the wood green, air dried it, and planed it down to the thicknesses specified by Petersen. I used local Southern pine because it was cheap and it represented a worst-case scenario from a kayak-building perspective. Between the knots; the rapid-growth, wide-spaced grain; and the erratic grain patterns, I really don’t think you could choose a worse wood to build a kayak from. There is no doubt in my mind that the slower growth spruce and fir that drifted through the Arctic Ocean and ended up on the west coast of Greenland was far superior to the wood used in these frames.

T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org 7 Figure 2. Completed frames ready for testing.

Figure 3. Not the best wood for building kayaks.

Figure 4. Deck with 200 pounds (91 kg) of sandbags. I cannot explain the green checkerboard; you’ll have to ask Jules.

8 T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org Figure 5. Full frame with 550 pounds (250 kg) of sandbags.

Test Results The upper deck structure without a keelson held 300 lb (136 kg) with a deflection of 5” in (12.7 cm) without failing. It failed when the next sandbag was added. There were numerous failure points on the frame, including both gunwales aft of the cockpit, a pegged connection between the back cross beam and a longitudinal deck reinforcement, a for- ward cross brace, and almost all the amidships cross-brace tenons. None of the lashings failed, nor did any components on the bow and stern. Surprisingly enough the frame did not fail at one of the knots. Figure 5 illustrates where the failures occurred.

Figure 6. Failure points on the upper deck.

The full deck with keelson supported 550 lb (250 kg) with a deflection of 3” (7.6 cm) without failing, and failed with the next sandbag. The failure points were at the keelson amidships, as well as both gunwales amidships. No lashings, pegs, or tenons failed, although one section of the gunwale was torn away by a cross-beam lashing (the lashing was stronger than the wood). Gunwale failure did occur at a knot location.

Figure 7. Failure points on the full deck.

T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org 9 Table 1. Frame test results.

As measured by this test, the partial frame without a keelson contributed 55% of the strength of the frame with a keel- son (300 lb/500 lb); accordingly, the keelson contributes 45% of the strength of the full structure under this test meth- od. The keelson also stiffens the frame significantly; total sag was limited to 3” before failure, whereas the upper deck sagged 5” under significantly lower loads. The total frame strength-to-weight ratio improved by 40% with the addition of a keelson. In summary, adding a keelson to the frame increases the weight of the frame by 8 pounds (3.6 kg) while significantly stiffening the structure and almost doubling the load-carrying capability.

Failure Analysis

Figure 8. Upper deck after test. There are three discrete failure mechanisms in this picture: the starboard gunwale failed, the pegged connection between the cross brace and the longitudinal reinforcement failed, and the tenon on the cross brace failed. The exact sequence of failure is not known.

1 0 T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org Figure 9. The starboard gunwale (from the underside) upper deck after test. Note that the gunwale failure occurred at a mortise location.

Figure 10. Broken cross brace on upper deck structure. Note that the wood failed parallel with the grain and that the lashing did not fail. The tenon also failed.

Figure 11. Port-side gunwale failure (viewed from below).

T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org 1 1 The component failures suggest that the primary failure mechanism was the vertical bending moments applied to the gunwales. The gunwale failures ran diagonally, consistent with compressive forces applied on the top of the gunwale and tensile forces on the bottom of the gunwale. The gunwale failures occurred at mortise locations. The tenon and cross-brace failures support vertical bending as the primary failure mechanism—the gunwales bowing out would not break a tenon; they would have just pulled out of the mortises.

Figure 12. Full frame failure. Note that both the starboard and port-side gunwales failed at a combined mortise and rib location, and the gunwale failure mode is different than the par- tial deck test: these gunwales appear to have failed from lateral bending, not vertical bend- ing. Also note that neither the pegged connec- tions nor the tenons failed in the full deck test.

Figure 13. Full frame after failure. Note the grain run-out on the keelson at the failure point and the wood that pulled away from the port gunwale at the point where the cross beam was lashed to the gunwale. Also note how flat the ribs are immediately after failure. My theory is that the gunwales were bowing out as the keelson was being pulled up, caus- ing the ribs to flatten out, and the wood to pull away from the gunwale, ultimately causing the gunwales themselves to fail.

The failure mechanisms on the full frame suggest that the gunwales failed more from the lateral bending forces of the gunwales bowing out than from vertical forces of bending down. This makes sense when you consider that the total deflection was considerably less (because the keelson was contributing strength to the frame). The flattened ribs and the torn-away section of gunwale support the theory that the forces on the upper deck structure were largely lateral. Figure 14 is a picture taken at the moment of failure, which collaborates the theory that the gunwales were experienc- ing considerable lateral forces.

1 2 T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org Figure 14. Frame at the point of failure. Note how far the gunwales have spread, indicating that there are substantial lateral forces in play.

Figure 15. Method of attaching keelson to the gunwales to prevent the keelson from pulling away under tension. Neither end failed.

Although this was a test of kayak frames, not skinned kayaks, the failure mechanisms should be reviewed within the context of a fully skinned kayak. A tight skin will serve to prevent the gunwales from bowing out, and because the skin acts on the entire length and width of the gunwale, that additional strength would be significant. I am not sure what effect a tight skin will have on the keelson and ribs; it is possible that instead of the gunwales bowing out the keelson would be drawn up. Insofar as the primary failure mechanism was the gunwales bowing out, my guess is that if the same test was performed with skinned kayaks, the strength of the kayak would be greater and the difference in load- carrying capability would be even greater.

T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org 1 3 Lessons Learned for Skin-on-Frame Builders 1. Love the lashings. Using the commercially available wax coated nylon artificial sinew, not one of the lashings failed. In fact, the wood failed, and the lashing didn’t fail. 2. Under heavy loads the gunwales will bow outward. If you don’t lash the cross beams to the gunwales (or use pegs), you are relying solely on the skin to keep the frame intact under heavy loads. I strongly recommend that every other cross beam be lashed to the gunwales as specified by Petersen. 3. A strong frame can be built using clearly inferior wood. Superior wood will result in an even stronger frame. Try to avoid knots at the amidships location or where the gunwales bend sharply to form the bow or stern. 4. Do not weaken the gunwales by locating a rib mortise in same the place as a cross-beam mortise (see Figure 16). Minimize the size of the mortises, and consider mortises that do not fully penetrate the gunwale as a means of preserv- ing gunwale strength. 5. The keelson is under a lot of tension. Make sure that the two ends of the keelson are firmly secured to the gunwales using the methods described by Petersen, if for no other reason than to limit sag. Look for grain run-out in the keelson. 6. Pay attention to the grain of the wood. For example, the forward cross braces are raised to allow legs and knees to fit in the kayak. The preferred method of building these braces is to use a piece of wood that already conforms to the desired shape (like from a stump or bent limb). Another method commonly used is to create a bent laminate. My method was to cut the brace from a wider board—ignoring the grain direction—and it failed (see Figure 17).

Figure 16. Mortise do’s and don’ts. If you locate a cross-brace mortise in Figure 17. Cross beam do’s and don’ts. Bent the same place as a rib mortise, you reduce the cross sectional area of wood or laminate cross braces are stronger the gunwale and weaken it. than straight-grained wood cut from a wider board.

Conclusions A keelson significantly strengthens and stiffens the kayak frame. If you are designing to a specific hull strength you can achieve the desired strength with a lighter frame by using a keelson. If you are designing to a specific hull weight, you can build a significantly stronger frame by using a keelson. To realize the additional strength and stiffness, it is impor- tant to properly secure the two ends of the keelson.

From an engineering perspective, the keelson is an excellent example of an engineered solution to a critical problem.

1 4 T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org In my mind, the testing confirms that the Inuit kayak builders understood the basics of structural engineering and strength of materials. Knowing that the keelson would be subjected to significant tensile forces, they sized the keelson to withstand those forces and designed methods to secure either end of the keelson.

Musings This whole episode started when a colleague criticized my kayak’s hull design, stating that by putting most of the mass of the kayak at or above the waterline, the Inuit created an inherently unstable vessel—or at a minimum increased the instability of a marginally stable vessel. I spun off on a tangent trying to prove that the design was solid by focusing on the unique aspects of the keelson (or “not-a-keel” as my colleague called it). What I believed at the time was that the upper deck was weak if exposed to bending forces, and the keelson was needed to prevent the kayak from failing in heavy seas or sagging under normal conditions.

What this test indicates is that the deck is plenty strong on its own accord, probably stronger than it has to be. If you load one of these kayaks up with 300 pounds in the water it won’t break; it will sink intact and rest peacefully on the bottom. Although I believe that I have proven that the keelson is in fact a wonderfully engineered component worthy of our admiration for its strength and simplicity, I have really not addressed the issue of distribution of mass above the waterline. At minimum, the West Greenland Inuit could have reduced the mass of the upper deck without sacrificing any strength, in a manner similar to that of the baidarka or the Mackenzie River Kayaks (Figure 17). In the words of Nick Schade, “If it breaks, make it bigger; if it doesn’t break, make it lighter; if it slides apart, tie it together; if it slides togeth- er, block it apart.”

Figure 18. Mackenzie River kayak frame. Note that the upper deck components are significantly smaller than those in the West Greenland kayak and that there are multiple longitudinal stringers. In theory, this design will result in a lighter weight and higher strength-to-weight ratio.

So now the question is why the deck of a West Greenland kayak is so heavy (and so strong). If the West Greenland Inuit were as smart as I think they were, or if they simply worked to Nick Schade’s rules, they should have figured out that they could make their kayaks lighter and more stable without making them weaker. Ben Fuller comments that the West Greenland kayak is the oldest and least sophisticated of the Artic kayaks; that is certainly one plausible explana- tion. Tom Milani speculates that the type of water the kayaks were paddled in has an influence on the design, noting that Canadian and Alaskan kayaks carried their prey (and other cargo) inside the vessel. He also questions if the frame

T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org 1 5 is designed with rolling in mind. There may be may be sound logic behind the design. Strength is only one aspect of kayak design; durability and resilience may be equally important. And as much as I tout space-frame structures for their strength-to-weight ratios, they are not the most durable structures. If one element is damaged or fails, the loads on adjacent elements increase, and the failures multiply rapidly. In the full deck test everything was fine one minute, and everything failed the next minute.

The answer is probably a combination of the above. The West Greenland kayak was primarily a hunting vessel, capsizes and rolling are inevitable, and West Greenland is fraught with dangers that are not as prevalent in the more western areas of the Arctic. Getting tossed up against the rocks or an iceberg can break a keelson, and such a calamity can have two outcomes. Based on my test results, a broken keelson on a West Greenland kayak will result in a compromised but still intact kayak. It may sag a little more but the deck is strong enough to preserve the structure and allow the occu- pant to remain in the kayak. If the deck structure were more like a true space-frame structure, with smaller cross braces and longitudinal stringers, loss of the keelson may be catastrophic. The heavy deck structure of the West Greenland kayak may be a feature designed to protect the occupant from harm in the event of damage to the vessel. True, it results in a vessel that is heavier and more prone to capsize, but a capsize can be recovered from, whereas a broken frame will almost certainly result in death of the occupant.

It may be a coincidence that the kayaks of the western Arctic that have lighter decks come from regions characterized by broad shallow coastlines absent of icebergs. Rasmussen comments that the use of kayaks in the western Artic are more limited to rivers and bays. It may also be a coincidence that the Inuit from the western Arctic did not develop roll- ing and capsize recovery methods like West Greenland Inuit. Somehow I don’t think so.

Observations and Speculations I saw this picture in on page 41 of Kaj-Birket-Smith’s book Eskimo.

Figure 19. “Primitive” Eskimo sledge from the Caribou Eskimo.

The primitive Eskimo sled is very similar to the deck of the West Greenland (and many other) kayak frames. The side rails are long and thin, the cross braces are short and thick, the cross braces are spaced closely together, the middle of the side rails is taller than the ends, and there is a slight amount of rocker in the rails (the ends of the rails are slightly higher than the midsection). If you pull the two ends of the sled rails together you have the deck of a kayak. If we as- sume that the dog sled came first, we can make an argument that the kayak is a direct descendent of the dog sled. I’m sure that numerous other researchers have made the same observation, but I couldn’t find a point by point discussion of the similarities between sled and kayak, so here goes. My favorite observation is that the kayak and the dog sled are

1 6 T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org both watercraft. The water that supports a dog sled is harder than the water that supports a kayak, but snow, ice, and water are just labels for the different physical states of H2O, and within the context of survival in the Arctic, the Inuit had to understand that water is still water regardless of its state.

My second observation is that both vessels are designed to withstand significant bending forces; the sled had to with- stand the forces associated with crossing a crevasse or break in the ice (Figure 20).

Figure 20. Primitive sled crossing a break in the ice. Note the bending forces imposed on the structure are very similar to the forces on a kayak between two waves. The similarities between sled and kayak don’t end there; more advanced sleds take on the characteristics of space- frame structures (Figure 21).

Figure 21. Advanced Inuit sled frame. Note the space-frame structure details.

As previously mentioned, both vessels incorporate rocker, a slight bow in the bottom of the structure. It is well known in the modern kayaking community that adding rocker to a kayak frame improves the maneuverability of the kayak. With respect to rocker on dog sleds, consider this passage from Birket-Smith, page 81, when describing sleds of the Caribou Eskimos: “Maneuvering with these long sledges might seem difficult, but in reality only a short length of the runners rests upon the snow, as their undersides taper up the front and back.” Just as rocker reduces the amount of the sled rail that is in contact with the ice, rocker reduces the amount of hull that is in contact with the water, in both cases improving maneuverability.

Within the context of survival in the Arctic, you can imagine a close relationship between kayaks and dog sleds. They are the only vehicles available to carry hunters, weapons, and prey; they are both essential for survival; they are both made of a material that is in short supply; and they are both designed to withstand bending moments. This relation- ship is documented in Eugene Arima’s book Inuit Kayaks in Canada: A review of Historical Records and Construction, from page 101:

T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org 1 7 Forested country was also visited for fresh timber, sometimes from afar with journeys months long. For ex- ample, from the Northwest Labrador Peninsula a man might travel several hundred miles south to the trees in winter and make a sled to be converted later to a kayak as the summer overtook him on the return trip north.

The sled and kayak not only use identical materials and similar methods of construction, but their critical dimensions are not that dissimilar. Table 2 is a comparison of the dimensions of dog sleds described by Therkel Mathiassen in Mate- rial Culture of the Igluik Eskimos, one of the Reports of the Fifth Thule Expedition of Knud Rasmussen.

Table 2. Comparison of various sleds with Petersen’s kayak.

The exact relationship between sled and kayak is probably not knowable, but we can speculate. From a resource per- spective it makes sense to retain common features of the two vessels. If wood is plentiful, you build one sled and one kayak. If wood is scarce, you make do with a single vessel and modify it to meet the demands of the seasons. And even if wood is plentiful it makes sense to retain the flexibility and common methods of construction, for no one knows what tomorrow will bring. Insofar as sleds were used primarily in winter and kayaks were used primarily in summer, such a conversion can be made without sacrificing survival chances.

And so I propose that one possible explanation for the similarities between kayaks and sleds is that the Inuit needed to maintain the ability to convert the craft from one form to another. If a hunter has a kayak and a sled, and something disastrous happens to the sled, he doesn’t have to start from scratch to build a new one. If his kayak is smashed on the rocks, and he has the good fortune to survive, he can borrow parts from the sled to build another kayak. Considering the scarcity of wood and the amount of labor necessary to shape a log into a gunwale or a skid, we should not discount the importance of having a backup plan; if General Motors can share components across multiple platforms, so could the Inuit.

From a knowledge perspective it also makes sense to retain common features. The Inuit knew how strong sled frames

1 8 T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org were from daily experiences (my little experiment was repeated every time a crevasse was crossed). By building a kayak frame with the same features, they knew they had a strong frame, with or without a keelson. It also makes sense to employ common construction means and methods. By using one common set of tools, materials, and methods, the Inuit make maximum use of minimal resources.

Finally, I am proposing that the kayak is a direct descendent of the sled, and that alone can explain the similarities. I don’t think the kayak evolved from birch-bark canoes, or dugouts, or inflated whale carcasses.

I think it happened like this: A group of hunters on dog sleds are pursuing caribou across the tundra, a chase that has gone on for weeks, and finally they find their prey. Sadly, by now the rivers have thawed, the caribou are on the other side of a river, and our hunters have no way of crossing. Hunter #1: “All this time and nothing, nothing to show for it. All that meat, and no way to get it.” Hunter # 2: “I’m not turning back. We’ve gone too far to turn around with nothing to show for it. If we don’t bring back meat we will not all survive.” Hunter # 3: “There is no way we can cross this river, it is too wide, too deep. We will die.” Hunter # 4, looking at his sled: “It’s too bad these things don’t float like an ice floe, we could just stand on them and pole our way across.” Hunters # 1, 2, and 3 stare at Hunter #4. Maybe not right then and maybe not right there, but pretty soon seal floats go under the sled, a little later ribs and skin get added, and before long the kayak is born.

Peer Review Comments / Ben Fuller Read this with interest, some comments: I'd lose the “understood.” These folks did not understand in the sense that engineers understand. All was empirical: there was no language to describe this. Pretty much the same in all non-mathematical cultures. Design is evolutionary. On the sizing of the gunwale stringers, you can’t get much smaller given the deck beam and rib sizes and keep uncut grain runs. You have mortise pockets coming up and the deck beam mortises coming through. So the “working” part of the gunwale, the run of uncut wood above the deck mortises, below the deck mortises and above the rib mortises, and on the outboard side of the rib mortises, is much smaller than the total size of the gunwale.

I'm not surprised that the gunwales rotated out to fail. Part of that was in the way the system was loaded. You had point loading on the gunwales at the points of contact of the platform that supported the bags, and perhaps more important, it looks like the tops of the gunwales were not flat but flared out. If that’s the case, there would be tendency for the gunwale to rotate out. Might have happened anyway giving the flare to the gunwale.

The skin has to make a huge difference. As soon as you skin one of these things with its tensile strength the frame strength has to go up by order of magnitude.

So my conclusion is that the gunwale fabrication has more to do with the size of all materials and working them than

T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org 1 9 any entrapment issues. Contributing to The Masik The Masik welcomes The paper done by a Finnish guy whose name Vernon would remember that talks about contributions and complexity in skin-on-frame construction as well as adaptation to various ecological niches is queries. If you have an idea for an article, but worth a look. Arguably, the Eastern end and oldest of the peopling of the arctic has the least aren’t sure if it’s right sophisticated construction. for The Masik, or if you want to discuss it further before com- mitting to writing, Author’s Response contact Helen Wilson, I pondered how to support the sandbags a great deal. I wanted to place them in the cockpit to the editor. She can be reached by e-mail simulate the weight of the paddler, but the Inuit also carried loads on the deck beams. I finally (helen@greenlandor- settled on the plywood on top of the frame because that was the simplest way to do it, and bust.org) and by reg- ular mail (PO Box 4183, Ben is right, the pressure of the plywood on the gunwales no doubt caused the gunwales to Arcata, CA 95518). bow out more than if all of the weight was placed in the cockpit. The method of supporting If possible, articles the weight was identical for both the full frame and the partial frames, yet the failure mecha- should prepared elec- nisms were different, so I’m sticking to my position that the keelson is a critical structural tronically and saved in Rich Text Format (.rtf). member of a skin-on-frame kayak. The less formatting done, the better (dou- ble-spaced text is fine). With regard to empirical knowledge, I agree that the Inuit did not understand this stuff in the Photographs should same sense that engineers do. Their knowledge was based on experiences, both good and not be embedded in the article. Instead, bad, experimentation, observation, analysis, comparisons, real-world learning. All humans place a caption about benefit from experiential learning, and somehow we managed to survive for hundreds of where the photo should appear and thousands of years before language, classroom education, and engineering were developed. send the individual In our current condition we employ both empirical knowledge and knowledge obtained photographs with the text. Photos should through less experiential methods to navigate our way through life. Without getting overly be as high resolution philosophical, it seems we should not underestimate the significance of empirical knowledge. as possible and can be sent in .jpeg, .tif or Video link: https://vimeo.com/83906123. .raw format.

2 0 T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org Deconstructing West Greenland Kayaks Part IV: Hull Design Part One: Form Follows Function By Ralph C. Young Copyright 2014

It is the pervading law of all things organic and inorganic, of all things physical and metaphysical, of all things human and all things superhuman, of all true manifestations of the head, of the heart, of the soul, that the life is recognizable in its expression, that form ever follows function. This is the law. —Louis Sullivan.

Hull design is the most complicated aspect of naval architecture. Achieving a comprehensive understanding of hull design and fluid dynamics may be the engineering equivalent to Buddhist enlightenment: many speak of it, but few achieve it. Although we have a pretty good idea of what happens, and why, the underlying physics of a vessel traveling through water still overwhelms most engineers, yet somehow the Inuit designed one of the most sophisticated hull designs without the benefit of our ship-building history or our understanding of the physical world. As discussed in prior articles, knowledge can consist of an in-depth understanding of a subject obtained through practice and experi- ence (empirical), or it can be based on education and the application of scientific or mathematic rules. In some ways, hull design is not that complicated; man has been building boats for tens of thousands of years and has pretty much figured out what works and what doesn’t work. On the other hand, man is currently spending many millions of dollars every year on complex modeling software and tow tanks trying to better understand hydrodynamics and hull design. The question this article addresses is how empirical knowledge alone can produce a vessel as sophisticated as the Greenland kayak.

Just as boat design can be empirical or scientific, so too is communication. Accordingly I have written this article in two languages, Plain English and Engineering Terminology.

Purpose This article will deconstruct the various aspects of the West Greenland kayak hull design for the purpose of under- standing the design features and will present a theory that explains how the Inuit were able to design sophisticated watercraft solely using empirical knowledge.

Basics Hull design determines stability, speed, seaworthiness, efficiency, stealth, control, etc. David Zimmerly makes the point in his 1983 article “Form Followed Function and the Function Was Hunting”:

Sea mammal hunting boats depended on stealth rather than outright speed for success, because a frightened seal will dive and be gone in an instant. The boats had to be seaworthy, too; the wind swept Arctic coasts de- manded no less. Finally, such boats had to carry home captured game, sometimes over considerable distances.

T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org 2 1 The Inuit needed a highly efficient watercraft to cover long distances in search of their prey; they need a stealthy vessel to approach their prey within killing distance, and they needed speed to recover the prey before it sank. Stealth has at least two components, visibility and sound. We know that the Inuit understood the need for a silence from C. E. Whit- taker’s account of a whale hunt (Inuit Kayaks in Canada: A Review of Historical Records and Construction, E.Y. Arima, page 10): “Dead silence prevailed among the hunters, as they believe the whale has very keen hearing. In the settlement even, two miles away, wood-cutting, or digging, or other noisy work was forbidden, lest the whales be frightened.”

From the pictures of kayaks with white screens across the front deck, we also know that the Inuit knew it was impor- tant to not be seen. So if we subscribe to the theory that form follows function, we can use that context in the decon- struction of the West Greenland Kayak: all aspects of the kayak’s hull design are defined by the functions that the kayak must perform.

Discussion in Plain English Stealth means a kayak travels through the water quietly and with minimal visibility. Efficiency means maximizing the distance you can travel with your physical effort. The hunter’s mission was to locate, kill, and retrieve his prey in a single journey. The more distance you can cover the better your chances of encountering prey; double the distance you can travel and you quadruple the area you can cover (see Figure 1). Stealth means silence and low visibility. Sound travels almost five times faster in water than it does in air, and marine mammals have very good underwater hearing. Their underwater hearing is significantly better than their above-water eyesight, so silence is probably more important than low visibility. Whoever has the quietest, least visible, and most efficient kayak has the highest success rate when hunt- ing. He will succeed when others don’t, and his hull design will be copied by less successful hunters.

I am proposing a very simple explanation for a very complex hull de- sign: the West Greenland kayak is designed specifically to minimize the amount and type of hull noise generated underway. Noise coming from a kayak will warn seals and other marine mammals that a hunter is approaching. Sound travels really well in water, and seals have really good hearing when underwater. My theory is that every Inuit kayak builder was conscious of the need to build a silent vessel, and that through experimentation and observation they optimized their designs to minimize acoustic emissions.

Figure 1. Double the distance that you can travel and you quadruple the area within your hunting range.

2 2 T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org There is some synergy here—noise is a byproduct of an inefficient design. Water that travels smoothly and silently past a hull is the ideal, and friction is minimal. When smooth flow is interrupted, water moves in a turbulent fashion; fric- tion increases, and so does noise. The theory is basically that the quietest hull will be the most efficient hull; the Inuit tinkered with their kayaks until they it couldn’t be perfected any further, and by doing so invented one of the most efficient hull designs in our maritime history.

Discussion Using Engineering Terminology A kayak is a displacement watercraft. A fully loaded kayak that weighs 192 pounds (87.2 kg) displaces 3 cubic feet (.085 cubic meters) of saltwater. If you move that kayak one boat length you have to move 3 cubic feet of water out of the way, and 3 cubic feet of water has to flow into the void left by the kayak. If you want to cover 4 miles in 1 hour, you need to move at least 52 cubic feet of water out of the way every minute. The amount of work it takes to move that water is a function of the hull design. The amount of noise that moving all that water makes is a function of hull design. An inefficient hull design will require a lot of work to move the water and will make a lot of noise. An efficient hull de- sign will require considerably less work to move the same amount of water and will make less noise. Efficiently moving water is paramount, and the key to efficiency is to minimize the rate of change in velocity of the displaced water mol- ecules. A long, pointy, and narrow boat displaces water at a slower rate than a short, fat kayak with the same displace- ment. Put simply, the water is displaced more gradually over the length of the vessel, and by doing so it is possible to maintain laminar flow of the fluid.

In addition to the work required to displace water, we also have to work to overcome the friction of a boat moving through water. We know that the most efficient means of moving water is to create and maintain laminar fluid motion. In the case of a kayak moving through water, there will be a layer of water molecules that adhere through friction to the hull, and that through friction between water molecules more and more molecules will be dragged along with them. Of course, there is slip between the molecules, but as long as the molecules move smoothly friction, or drag, is minimized. Try to move those molecules too quickly in any direction and the smooth boundary layers break down and turbulent flow results, and with turbulent flow drag increases. Figure 2 illustrates the difference between laminar and turbulent flow.

Figure 2. Laminar flow (top) versus turbulent flow (bottom).

T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org 2 3 As seen in plan view, the hull of the West Greenland Kayak is tapered from bow to stern. The hull is either getting wider or getting narrower for the entire length of the vessel. From a water-displacement perspective, the displacement of water away from the hull takes place over the entire front half of the boat, and the return of water toward the vessel takes place over the entire rear half of the boat. Gently displacing water over the full length of the kayak not only helps to maintain laminar flow, but is also reduces the amplitudes of the bow wave and the stern trough. Not only is the kayak tapered as seen in a plan view, but is also tapered in the side view and the forward and aft cross sections (Figure 3). The displacement of water takes place slowly and gradually over a long length of the hull.

Figure 3. The bow of the kayak is tapered in all three dimensions, resulting in gradual, efficient, and silent displacement of water.

Plain English Now this all sounds very complicated but it re- ally is not; it’s common sense. You don’t need an engineering degree to understand that water moving slowly and smoothly makes less noise than water moving quickly and chaotically. You don’t need a degree in marine biology to figure out that seals, whales, and other marine mammals have really good hear- ing when underwater. And you don’t need a degree in naval architecture to design a hull that moves smoothly through the water. But you do have to be smart, you do have to be observant, and you do have to be resourceful. You have to make sure that the surface of your kayak is smooth, and you have to minimize the rate at which the hull changes shape. Seal skin was fine-tuned through evolu- tion to move smoothly and quietly through the water, solving problem # 1. Making the kayak long and narrow solves problem #2. So how did the Inuit do it? The sea was their laboratory, their senses were their instruments, their brains were their computers, and their experiences guided them. Get it right, you build an efficient and quiet kayak and your family survives. Get it wrong and they won’t. This isn’t trial and error; it is focused problem-solving using empirical knowledge when survival is on the line.

The Theory: Form Follows Function My theory is that every aspect of the Greenland kayak design was dictated by functional requirements, and by analyz- ing the functional requirements we can gain insights into the designs. In military speak you first define the mission, and then use the mission statement to define the functional requirements.

The mission statement: Safely and efficiently transport the hunter and his weapons to his prey through frigid waters under a wide variety of sea conditions, permit the hunter to approach and kill his prey in a stealthy manner, and safely transport the hunter and his prey home again.

2 4 T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org The following features are required to meet the functional requirements:

1. The kayak must protect the occupant from life-threatening conditions and events. 2. The kayak must be seaworthy 3. The kayak must be efficient 4. The kayak must be stealthy

The trick is meeting all the functional requirements because they compete with one another, and some of the require- ments are more important than others. For example, a kayak can be made safer by making it big (high volume) and wide, but it won’t be very efficient, if the wind is blowing it won’t be very seaworthy, and the seals will see it coming a mile away. My take on the priority of the functions is as follows:

– Stealth is the highest priority. If the Inuit hunter could not get close to a seal, whale, or walrus, he could not kill it, and without the ability to kill seals the West Greenland Inuit would face extinction. – Efficiency is the second highest priority. The more efficient the kayak is, the farther the hunter can travel in a given time period (or with a given level of effort). The farther a hunter can travel, the more area he can cover, which improves the probability of finding and killing prey. The relationship between travel distance and hunting area is not linear; if you double the distance a hunter can travel, the effective hunt- ing area increases by a factor of four. – Seaworthiness is the third priority. A vessel with poor seaworthiness could still put out to sea on a calm day. It’s still important to be seaworthy so you can maximize the number of days you can hunt, but it is not as important as stealth and efficiency. – Protecting the occupant receives the lowest priority. As we all know, a Greenland kayak is prone to capsize, so we learn how to balance and brace to prevent capsizes, we learn how to roll to when the brace doesn’t work, and we wear protective clothing so we don’t freeze to death if we do capsize. The Inuit accepted the risk of an unstable kayak and implemented paddling and clothing methods to mitigate the risks.

Lest you think I am just making this stuff up, the U.S. Navy followed the exact same logic in World Wars I and II when designing submarine chasers. They needed stealth to sneak up on the enemy, efficiency determined how far they could travel without refueling, they got thrown around in heavy seas, and there was precious little armor on them be- cause that added weight and reduced efficiency. The parallels don’t end there—a submarine could not outrun a sub chaser, so their primary defense mechanism was diving!

Stealth The two primary elements of stealth are noise and visibility. If the kayak makes no noise and presents a minimal silhou- ette, it is stealthy. Minimizing buoyancy and freeboard minimizes the silhouette; creating hull and paddle designs that minimize disturbance of the water minimizes the acoustic emissions of the kayak. Smooth laminar flow of water around the kayak and the paddle is the key to silence. Silent paddling depends not only on the size and shape of the paddle, but also the skill of the paddler.

T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org 2 5 Efficiency Again, a hull design that minimizes disturbance of water should have high-efficiency values, and smooth laminar flow of water around the hull is important. Inefficiency can be measured as drag, defined as resistance to the motion of a body through a fluid. This gets really complicated, as drag is a function of the submerged surface area (also known as the wetted surface area), the shape of the hull, and the smoothness of the hull surfaces. The wetted surface area is mainly a function of the displacement of the kayak, although different kayak designs with the same displacement have slightly different values for wetted surface areas. You probably can’t get much better than seal skins for your surface, so hull shape becomes the single most important factor in efficiency.

Seaworthy It’s difficult to characterize any vessel that is prone to capsizing as being seaworthy. Nonetheless, there are degrees of seaworthiness even in vessels that are tippy. Just because the Greenland kayak has lateral instability issues (like cap- sizing) doesn’t mean that it can’t take a 2-meter wave head on with minimal risk to the occupant. Because of the hull design, the pointy bow and stern, and the distribution of buoyancy, these kayaks are quite seaworthy from a longitudi- nal perspective. The low profile minimizes the effects of high winds. We just have lateral stability issues that are com- pensated for with skill and training.

Protection The kayak does a very good job protecting the lower half of your body from the elements; protective clothing is required to protect the upper half. Although the tuilik may not technically qualify as part of the vessel, the two do go hand and hand.

The Proof My contention is that the West Greenland kayak hull design is one of the most sophisticated vessel designs from a stealth (and coincidentally efficiency) perspective. Proving this premise is going to be difficult—how do you measure stealth? The one aspect of hull design that is quantifiable is efficiency. We can measure the resistance to flow for vari- ous hull designs and declare the vessel with the lowest drag the winner. In theory, this can be done with the computer models developed for just such purposes, but models rely on assumptions and estimates, assumptions and estimates can be manipulated, and the results can always be disputed. To be credible, I believe the proof must be physical and repeatable. Accordingly, I have devised the following test:

1. I will build several scale models of noteworthy seagoing vessels, including a West Greenland Kayak, a submarine chaser, an America’s Cup Sailboat, a speedboat, and maybe some other hull designs if I have the time. Each model will be the same length overall, each model will be proportional to its original de- sign, and all models will have the exact same displacement. 2. At the next Delmarva Paddler’s Retreat, we will drag each model through a pool using a constant force. Figure 4 illustrates how the constant force will be achieved. We will record the time it takes each model to travel the distance of the pool. We will run several heats to confirm repeatability of the test results.

2 6 T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org 3. The hull design with the lowest drag will be the fastest, all other factors being equal. 4. At the same time, we will attempt to quantify the acoustic emissions generated by the hull by placing a hydrophone 1 meter under the path of the hull and recording and characterizing the sound made by the hull passing through the water. 5. If the West Greenland model scores at or near the top of the rankings, and if the kayak frame has one of the lowest acoustic emission levels, I will argue that the Inuit achieved an efficient hull design by making a quiet vessel.

Figure 4. Constant force tow mechanism.

Hull Speed as it Applies to West Greenland Kayaks

A kayak is a displacement vessel, and as it moves forward it forces water out of the way. It takes energy to move water, your energy. When you paddle your kayak much of the effort goes toward simply moving water out of the way so your kayak can occupy that space. The faster you go, the more water you have to move, the harder you have to work. As a kayak moves through the water, water molecules are being moved in many directions, but the two main movements are that water that is in front of the kayak is moved forward and to the sides to make room for the kayak, and water that is alongside and behind the kayak moves into the void left behind the kayak.

Water is not compressible, so those molecules that are being moved have to go somewhere. They can’t go down because there is an incompressible column of water below them. They can go sideways, but only if they push another molecule out of the way. The water molecules that are at rest want to stay at rest, leaving the moving molecules no choice but to go up. Air is compressible and will allow the water to move up. This is the path of least resistance, so water piles up. A bow wave is nothing more than a pile of water molecules that has been moved up higher than the surrounding molecules. We all know that physics will not allow those molecules to stand up indefinitely—gravity will bring them down to mix with their brethren—so the wave will move more or less sideways until all the displaced water is back to its comfortable equilibrium state at sea level.

T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org 2 7 At the back end of the kayak a stern trough is generated by the kayak exiting a space it used to occupy. Water flows into the void left behind the kayak. The bow wave is an accumulation of water higher than the waterline at rest, the stern trough is a depression below the waterline. The faster you go the higher the water at the bow, and lower the wa- ter is at the stern. If you think of the bow wave as an area of high-pressure water in front of you and the stern trough as an area of lower pressure water behind you, you can visualize the forces that work against you as you try to go faster. If you go fast enough the bow wave start to interact with the stern wake causing the kayak to “squat” in the water. John Heath described the phenomena in his article “Climbing a Liquid Hill.” Naval architects describe this as the hull speed, and a gentleman named Froude was able to mathematically describe the phenomena and was aptly rewarded with a number being named after him. Figure 5 illustrates a kayak at or near its hull speed; Figure 6 illustrates a kayak travel- ing faster than its hull speed.

Figure 5. Kayak traveling at or near its hull speed. Note the length of the bow wake is the same as the length of the kayak as measured at the waterline.

Figure 6. Kayak exceeding its hull speed (exaggerated). Note that the trough associated with the bow wave interacts with the stern trough to create a depression under the stern. This phenomena is what John Heath referred to as “Climbing a Liquid Hill.”

If you want to learn more about this subject, mix a really strong drink and Google Froude number. However, all you really need to know is that the longer the length of the vessel, as measured at the waterline, the further the bow wave has to travel before it interacts with the stern trough, which means you can go faster before experiencing the effects of the interaction. Once you hit that point where the bow wave interacts with the stern trough, the amount of work required to go any faster increases dramatically, so hull speed effectively limits the top speed for displacement ves- sels. Military vessels typically power through hull speed (flank speed) because the mission may depend on it and they can afford to, but commercial vessels and human-powered vessels typically don’t have the necessary horsepower. Although length at the waterline is the main factor in hull speed, the shape of the hull affects amount of resistance you encounter at or near the hull speed. Except that it isn’t that simple.

Just like center of gravity or center of buoyancy is a simplification that engineers create to enable them to understand much more complicated issues like distributions of mass and buoyancy, the whole concept of Froude numbers and hull speed is a simplification. The length of the waterline defines the distance that the bow wave has to travel to reach the

2 8 T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org stern wave, but the shape of the hull determines the magnitude of the effects of the hull-speed phenomena. For exam- ple, let’s look specifically at the phenomena we refer to as a bow wake. Unless you have a vessel with a blunt bow, like a tanker, it is not a bow wake, it is a hull wake. It may originate at the bow, but so long as the cross-sectional area of the hull increases, water is being displaced away from the hull, and the shape of the wake is changed. The Greenland Kayak has a V shape when viewed from above, and a V shape when viewed from the bow. These V shapes result in a gradual displacement of water, which translates into a long and low bow wave, as opposed to a short, high bow wave typical of most vessels. As a result, the effects of the interaction between the bow wave and the stern wake are minimized. The interaction is still there, but the impact is lessened. The same logic applies to the stern. If the kayak had an abrupt blunt stern, there would be large and deep depression in the water behind the kayak. Because the Greenland Kayak stern has a gradually decreasing cross section, water can flow into the void left behind gradually, which results in a small and shallow depression. There is still an interaction between the bow wave and the stern trough, but the effects of the in- teraction are minimized. Length of the vessel determines the speed at which the interaction occurs, but the hull shape affects the magnitude of the interaction.

An interesting design characteristic is that the shape of the bow and stern effectively increase the kayak’s length at the waterline as speed increases. West Greenland kayaks are characterized by significant rake; a lot of bow and stern extend out of the water at normal cruising speed. However, at the hull speed the bow wave piling up in front of the kayak and the stern trough deepening at the stern results in more of the bow and stern being submerged—the length of the waterline increases. An increase of the length at the waterline increases the wavelength of the bow wave, which increases the theoretical hull speed. Genius!

Another interesting phenomena goes back to our old friend, distribution of buoyancy. Because there is very little buoy- ancy in the bow and stern, the influence of the bow wave on the pitch of the kayak is minimized.

In sum, the hydrodynamics of a vessel moving through water are so complicated that research facilities spend mil- lions on tow tanks just to validate their computer models, and mere mortals don’t have a chance of understanding the underlying physics or mathematics. The Inuit did, but we can’t. And I believe the reason that we can’t is because we can’t view the subject holistically—we have to break it down to things we can quantify and characterize and apply algorithms to. Our knowledge base relies on quantifying things, on computer models, simulations, understanding the very basic molecular and sub-molecular laws that control motion. But when it comes to hull design, I believe the Inuit had the edge over Western society because their knowledge was obtained differently—the sea was their laboratory, their senses were their instruments, their brains (collectively) were their computers, and survival was on the line. In our Western way of thinking, we fail to look at the continuum (anything that goes through a gradual transition from one condition to another condition without any abrupt changes) of the hull wave phenomena and attempt to model that. Instead we simplify things and concentrate on vessel length.

My belief is that the Inuit did understand these complex hull configurations because they were not constrained to knowledge based on mathematics. Rather than attempt to reduce physical phenomena into mathematical representa- tions, requiring simplification, they obtained a different kind of knowledge by observing the phenomena and learning

T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org 2 9 from each experience. They obtained a holistic understanding of the behavior of vessels and the sea, a knowledge that was not constrained by an algorithm. Within the simple context of this article, they learned what makes noise, and then learned how to minimize noise by gently moving water from one location to another, and then used that knowledge to build the stealthy hunters they needed to survive. Of course, it doesn’t end there; it continues to seaworthiness, stabil- ity, navigation by day and night, weather, animal behavior, etc. etc. etc.

In the peer review of my articles someone inevitably refers to trial and error as the explanation for how the Inuit were able to design sophisticated watercraft. If that is your mindset, I can’t change that, but I can ask you to at least allow them an expanded context: trial, observation, perception, analysis, reflection, discussion, understanding, obtaining knowledge, sharing the knowledge, transferring knowledge to the next generation, using the knowledge to identify improvements, implementing the improvements and repeating the process over and over and over forever because in their world there was no such thing as good enough.

David Heath’s Review Comments and Author’s Responses HEATH: In your discussion of the requirements for a kayak, I would add the following: 1. The kayak must protect the occupant from life-threatening conditions and events. 2. The kayak must be seaworthy. 3. The kayak must be efficient. 4. The kayak must be stealthy. 5. The builder must be able to build it with minimal effort, from things he can obtain, with minimal effort.

Agree with #5, overlooked that.

HEATH: Mr. Dyson proposes using modern materials for his bidarkas. That tended to drive my father into a frenzy whenever it came up. He felt that the original materials, if they could be found as good quality wood, etc., were so close to perfect, that why would one corrupt the design? I think I can see both sides, but I tend to favor my dad’s opin- ion on that one.

I’m in the middle on that. I understand being a purist, but from what I read the Inuit weren’t. They were more than happy to incorporate mast hoops for cockpits, nails, iron, or anything else that made their lives easier. So maybe Dyson is just carrying on the evolutionary change.

HEATH: I would feel more comfortable adding these few words to the following sentence from your text: “The faster you go, the more water you have to move in each second, the harder you have to work.” It seems to me that any particular kayak, when moved a certain distance, will require moving pretty much exactly the same amount of water, regardless of the speed. At least until the speed gets high enough that it splashes the water around.

I don’t know. The faster a car or airplane goes, the more air it moves, as measured as cubic feet per minute. You still displace 32 cubic feet per boat length. If you go one boat length per minute you move 32 cubic feet per minute. If you move 10 boat

3 0 T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org lengths per minute you move 320 cubic feet per minute.

However, all you really need to know is that the longer the length of the vessel, as measured at the waterline, the further the bow wave has to travel before it interacts with the stern trough, which means you can go faster before experiencing the ef- fects of the interaction.

HEATH: The previous quote makes me quite uncomfortable. The bow wave is always at the bow; it does not travel towards the stern at all. If anything the stern is traveling toward the bow wave. I don’t remember ever hearing anyone talk about this, but at the moment it seems logical that the movement of the water to get out of the way of the boat, is kind of like ringing a bell. A certain amount of water gets pushed up, and then falls, and then bounces up, and contin- ues to oscillate for quite some time.

Just when I think I understand something, boom, there it goes. You are absolutely right, the bow or hull wave travels diago- nally away from the kayak, and the kayak travels into the (wake?) of the wake? Echo? Trough? When you look at pictures of sailboats traveling at their hull speed you see a periodic wave that has its high point right amidships, with the trough at the bow and stern. I’ve tried watching kayaks at speed, but the wake is not as pronounced as in my drawings. Maybe the tow tests will help us visualize the phenomena. Thanks.

HEATH: Therefore, if I am correct, and I think there probably is a much more accurate analogy of this somewhere if you want to look for it, then the length of time that it takes for the water to fall and then rebound to its maximum height before falling again, might be quite constant. Depending on the gravitational constant, or something. Like if you drop a rock in the water and watched the waves move out as the water level where the rock landed goes up and down. And, if I am correct, then that would make it very logical that the waves get further apart the faster you go. Because you go further during the unit time that exists between one peak and the next. One oscillation. You might want to see if you can get a reference that explains that far better than I can, and hopefully that is well proven. My thought is just a guess.

If I have it right, the whole basis for Froude’s number is the relationship between the speed of the wave and the wavelength, and that is a constant rooted in gravity and the physics of moving water. And I understand what you are saying regarding the oscillations of the bow waves in the water. However, at speed all the oscillations occur away from the hull of the kayak and therefore cannot affect the kayak’s speed or efficiency.

HEATH: I certainly agree with your point that if we can minimize the height of the bow wave, that that will minimize the depths of the trough and the height of the next wave. All of that will minimize the raising of the bow and lowering of the stern while climbing the Liquid Hill.

I have been researching this subject for the last year, and think that the key factors are as follows: entrance angle of the bow (in all three dimensions) length-to-width ratio of the vessel, the form of the whole as a whole (that probably only makes sense to me but I don’t know any other way to say it), and the exit angles of the stern (in all three dimensions).

T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org 3 1 HEATH: I have not thought about this next sentence in that manner before: “Because there is very little buoyancy in the bow and stern, the influence of the bow wake on the pitch of the kayak is minimized.”

Some very sophisticated studies of Olympic racing kayaks show very minor changes in pitch of the kayak as speed increases. I’m not sure if it is because of the reduced buoyancy at the bow and stern or simply the effect of a long narrow boat.

HEATH: But, if the bulk of the boat is partway down the hill and the bow does not rise as high trying to get over the hill, then that would probably less of an angle of pitch as speed increases. Not the usual oscillating pitch of the bow rising and falling, but the permanent pitch as the boat tries to climb the Liquid Hill. Pitch is probably not the right term but I think you’ll know what I’m saying.

I’m having a hard enough time getting my head around steady-state conditions without considering oscillation due to waves. I am starting to believe that a West Greenland kayak simply doesn’t experience the same degree of attitude changing that other “fuller bodied” vessels experience. The Liquid Hill is still there, but nowhere as pronounced as other vessels.

HEATH: Having a long, fine stern would allow the stern to sink further, but I would guess that helping the water to move back into the place the boat used to occupy, more gently, would outweigh the lifting characteristics. Although of course, the bidarka did have a fairly blunt stern.

I am going to build a baidarka hull for my test, there are always baidarkas at Delmarva, maybe we can figure that out.

HEATH: And, at the moment, I do not recall much discussion of how the boat interacts with sinusoidal waves, breaking waves, and complex waveforms that are often found when waves coming from many directions and have many sizes mingle. Anywhere within miles of a shoreline, or iceberg, you will also get reflected waves. Bouncing off the shoreline like radar. In very complex patterns due to the exact shape of the shoreline.

Way, way, way beyond my mental capacity to understand physical phenomena. Also beyond my physical ability to handle in my kayak.

HEATH: Ocean currents are famous for causing waves to be steeper and breaking sooner, then they would in a perfect ocean of infinite size. Getting caught in the Gulfstream, with an opposing wind is a boater’s nightmare. Even though the Gulf of California, between Baja California and mainland Mexico, is a large body of water, most of the people who go boating there quickly notice that the waves tend to be squarer than normal ocean waves.

Experienced similar conditions in Bay of Fundy. Not a fan.

HEATH: All of these are factors that any ocean kayak must be able to deal with and survive. I always suspected that the bidarka had the square stern in order to rise up in a following sea. Likewise the extreme flare of the hollow bow shape, which when covered with skin, could only be produced by making their characteristic bifid bow.

3 2 T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org I am afraid that my understanding of the effects of hull design on the behavior of a kayak can’t support an intelligent re- sponse; I simply don’t know the answers. I do know that as hard as I can paddle I cannot detect any change in the pitch of my kayak. As an engineer I believe that the equal and opposite forces of paddling acting on my body are transmitted to the kayak frame as moment forces pushing the bow down, counteracting the Liquid Hill effect.

HEATH: To me, trial and error is a reasonable term to describe what you then described at greater length. Perhaps to you, you felt that it implied a randomness and ignorance. “Let’s just build a couple of stupid things without any under- standing, and see which one seems better afterwards.” The chimpanzee buying stocks by throwing darts at a page out of the Wall Street Journal. Actually they often do better than the pundits.

In the peer review of my articles someone inevitably refers to trial and error as their explanation for how the Inuit were able to design sophisticated watercraft. If that is your mindset, I can’t change that, but I can ask you to at least allow them an ex- panded context: trial, observation, perception, analysis, reflection, discussion, understanding, obtaining knowledge, sharing the knowledge, transferring knowledge to the next generation, using the knowledge to identify improvements, implementing the improvements and repeating the process over and over and over forever because in their world there was no such thing as good enough.

HEATH: And, probably to many people they may think that. I certainly did not think that the Arctic people were, nor are, any less intelligent, any less observant, any more foolhardy, etc. than any other large group of people. On the contrary, I think that any people that survived several generations, living in Arctic conditions, had Darwin working overtime to weed out the dumb ones. To weed out the ones that were not observant. To weed out the ones that were foolhardy.

HEATH: For many years I’ve tried to explain to the people that know nothing about native kayaks. These people that seem to have an arrogance and believe that how can these primitive people, that have never gone to Cambridge, de- sign anything. Obviously, the modern European designs MUST be clearly superior. Sort of like the Aryan race.

HEATH: That was an attitude that was very widespread when my dad started promoting native kayak designs in the mid-1950s. He bought the plans for a “Greenland kayak” designed by a British gentleman, who obviously had no idea what he was doing. It was an absolutely terrible design. It was not made using traditional construction techniques. It had bulkheads like a Klepper, and was the same length and beam as many successful Greenland designs, but was hor- ribly unstable and dangerous to use. Any native building that kayak to use the feed his family would have been quickly removed from the gene pool.

HEATH: I am very sure that after just a few generations, the Arctic people were on the average significantly more intel- ligent, more observant, better able to estimate risk and probability of survival than any large group of Europeans in the last 50 years. The duds were removed from the gene pool. Not only the hunter who went out in a poorly conceived kayak, but his family. If he didn’t come home, and with dinner, who was going to feed the wife and kids?

T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org 3 3 One of the reasons I am writing these articles is an attempt to dispel what I perceive is a Euro-centric arrogance that is summed up with the statement “It was just trial and error.” I mean sure, so was the space program if you want to overlook all the genius, hard work, experimentation, research, development, etc. Your father, Eugene Arima, Knud Rasmussen, and count- less others with first-hand experiences with the Inuit all knew that, but my personal experience has been that our current generation of kayakers do not share that appreciation.

As Harvey Golden pointed out, each of the many kayaks that he built were representative of different parts of the Arc- tic. As you are aware, they look very different. And, when he used them, he discovered that they had extremely differ- ent characteristics. And that each was very well-suited to what its people needed to do.

I’m sure that some design changes were initially done on a hunch, but I’ll bet a lot of money that the vast majority were done by people who watched and observed and understood, extremely well, the five necessary requirements of a good kayak. They appreciated subtle changes. And how each variable made the kayak quieter, easier to paddle, and so on. I have no argument with your rearranging the priorities of your five-part list. Good job.

HEATH: I mean all of the above as a good friend. I do not promise that I have done a great job of making my comments well thought out and sage. I apologize that I didn’t spend a lot of time on it. I think you’re doing a great job. Please keep up the good work. And if you have any more articles to send me, feel free. Also, if I don’t respond within a week or 10 days, feel free to gently remind me. I tend to get fixated on some of the projects or other things going on in my life, and forget about the optional stuff. The wheel that squeaks loudest gets the oil.

Thank you for your thoughtful comments. Your insights will result in a significantly improved article; I couldn’t ask for more. If you don’t mind I’ll summarize your comments and my responses for Tom so he doesn’t have to; I will send you everything for your approval.

3 4 T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org NEWSLETTER o f QAJAQ USA — t h e AMERICAN CHAPTER o f Q A A N N AT K AT T U U F I AT

The “Hand of Pavia” Rescue – Defined by John Doornick and Henry Romer

As practiced by John Doornink and Henry Romer - Labor Day 2006

Editor’s note: Thanks to Henry and John for allowing us to republish this article. In the sidebar appear instructions for cre- ating your own Oscar Rescue Dummy. Oscar may be more amenable to rescue practice than your more animate paddling partners.

Hand of Pavia is the name we use to refer to the variation of the “Hand-of-God” rescue that we learned from Pavia

Lumholt at SSTIKS 2005. While it might not be ever seen as a replacement for the grab-the-cockpit version of the

T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org 3 5 Hand-of-God rescue, it never-the-less is a good tool to also have Making Oscar available in the ol’ rescues toolbox. It works especially well with by Henry Romer traditional kayaks, but also works nicely with any kayak with good decklines. Oscar's body is a 23 gal. indoor trash can.

Home Depot has a selection at about $30 The rescue can be done from either the bow or the stern of the cap- each. I think I found one on sale when I was sized kayak, and the rescuer can approach so that the capsized kayak looking. It is 11" x 20" x 30" tall. That matches is either on his right or left side. This rescue, if done properly, uses a paddler's dimensions reasonably well. I fas- finesse rather than sheer strength to return the capsized paddler to ten two 4" x 2-1/4" x 8" clay bricks inside the an upright position. In this explanation, the term “close hand” refers bottom (Oscar's head) with cable ties. to the hand closest to the capsized kayak, and “far hand” refers to the hand farthest from the capsized kayak. Here is the rescue de- scribed:

Step 1 – The Approach

1. Approach the capsized kayak. Stop when you get to the bow or stern, whichever is closest. Remember that in a real rescue situation, speed will be important. Don't overshoot the mark, however. You can stop by falling down on the capsized hull and grabbing the bow or stern to stop your kayak. Be careful to keep your kayak parallel to the capsized kayak. Place your close hand across the capsized kayak onto the chine farthest from you. Take your far hand across your

3 6 T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org body and place it on the closest chine. This makes Oscar top heavy enough to cap-

size and resist rescue. There are 5 holes cut

Step 2 – Halfway Up in each side as shown.

These let the water in and out in a capsize

and rescue and give Oscar the right sort of

dynamics to simulate a paddler. The head

holes let Oscar flood and capsize. The body

holes let the water drain out during the

rescue. The body holes are also used to

strap Oscar into the cockpit. I use a selec-

tion of NRS straps. Locate the body holes far

2. Reach farther with your close hand, grabbing the gunwale (or enough from the trash can opening to clear deckline) on the far side of the capsized kayak. Begin to rotate the the cockpit. kayak upright by both using the weight of your body to push down onto the close gunwale and lifting on the far gunwale. Push down hard with the palm of your far hand and with the elbow/forearm of your close hand to make the rotation happen.

Step 3 – Grab the Far Gunwale

3. Shift the position of your far hand. Reach around the kayak, across the deck, and grab the other gunwale (or deckline).

T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org 3 7 Step 4 – Roll ’em up

4. Use the weight of your body to recover the victim to the upright position. This includes twisting your torso to help push your close hand under the kayak and pull your far hand across the top. At the end of the maneuver the rescuer should end up submerged, face down in the water, or facing the rescued kayak with his kayak inverted (or nearly inverted).

Step 5 – Hold ‘em steady

5. When you feel the other kayak stabilize upright, roll yourself up using the other kayak's rear deck for support. You may need to keep a grip on the rescued kayak if the other paddler is still wobbly.

3 8 T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org NEWSLETTER o f QAJAQ USA — t h e AMERICAN CHAPTER o f Q A A N N AT K AT T U U F I AT

Greenland* Moves Southward TIPS 2014 Group Photo. *Greenland paddlers, that is! By Fran Symes Photos by Chuck Symes

Way south of the Mason Dixon line you don’t often see Greenland paddlers, but they’re not unheard of. I know someone in Georgia who paddles with a stick… and I know someone in North Carolina… we paddle with sticks… a couple in the “upstate” (of South Carolina) paddles with sticks… often other paddlers ask about my stick, how and why it works—wouldn’t it be nice if we could all come together to share our experiences?

These are some of the musings that passed between Fern White and me as we drove to the Delmarva Paddler’s Re-

T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org 3 9 treat that cold, blustery weekend in October 2013. Little did we know that these same thoughts would set us on our journey toward organizing the newest Qajaq USA sanctioned paddling retreat.

While at Delmarva, we conducted our own unscientific survey and verified that most participants had found their way down to Delaware from farther north. Traditional paddlers from the Southeast were definitely under-represent- ed. So we floated the idea of having another event farther south.

The positive and encouraging comments that we received were enough to bolster our courage. So on the way back to South Carolina we made the daring decision to try our collective hand at event organizing. The concept for

TIPS—Traditional Inuit Paddlers of the Southeast—was born!

There is hardly a better place or time than spring in the Southeast. So we settled on early May as a target time for the new event. The only hitch was that this was less than six months away. The holidays were just around the corner.

Fern was in the midst of building a house. Could we do it?

Harboring more trepidation than we had with our first rolls, we began to map out what we needed to do. We had enthusiasm; we had determination; we had some applicable skills; and we had a commitment of personal funds to bankroll the endeavor. What we lacked was the voice of experience! This came to us through Chris Beckman. Exem- plifying the Greenlandic philosophy of sharing your knowledge with others, Chris selflessly helped us with every question we had or stumble we made. He has our deepest and undying gratitude.

Many others helped along the way also. Our thanks go out to the Qajaq USA Board for its support, to Janie Todd-

Butcher for designing our logo, to Jane Gulden for her musical serenades, to Debbie Seabrook for getting us through those morning stretches, and to all the extremely generous mentors. TIPS may not have become a reality and certainly would have been less successful without them.

The first annual TIPS Retreat was held 9–11 May 2014 at Camp Bob Cooper, on the shores of Lake Marion, in Summer- ton, South Carolina.

4 0 T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org Springtime in the South did not disappoint.

Friday afternoon we paddled among the cypress and tupelo trees in temperatures around 80 °F. Saturday and Sunday we prac- ticed rolls in water temperatures around 70.

Perfection!

Guest mentors for this inaugural event in- cluded Greenland Champion Alison Sigethy; The kayaks are unloaded and ready to go. Josh Hall from Charleston, SC; Ed Mann from

Florida; and Paul Diener from Lexington,

SC. Throughout the weekend they guided and advised us through rolls and strokes; shared information on kayaks and paddles; introduced us all to harpoon throwing; and impressed us with their skills, knowledge, and encouragement.

The QUSA fleet was on hand for everyone Chris Beckman sizing up the SOF kayaks. to explore and try out. And Paul Diener provided us with an impressive exhibit of different style traditional paddles to fondle and discuss.

Paul Diener proving that Debbie Seabrook actually can balance brace.

T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org 4 1 Will this thing really go anywhere? asks Fran Symes.

Less serious entertainment included the soothing sounds of the mountain dulcimer, the rousing sounds of bag- pipes, yoga stretches for kayakers, a host of shared DVDs and slides, and impromptu discussions. Oh, and let’s not forget the insanity and hilarity of the Saturday evening auction.

TIPS 2014 was a small, but energetic group of 25 brought together by their passion for, or desire to learn about,

Greenland-style kayaking, skills, and culture. Some received their first introduction to traditional paddling; other, more experienced paddlers, honed and refined their skills. Watching the weekend unfold wiped away all the anxiet- ies Fern and I had experienced before the event.

Participants arrived as strangers on Friday but departed as friends on Sunday, linked in a very special way by the shared learning experiences of the weekend. The second annual TIPS event awaits them to further cement their friendships and to establish additional ones.

TIPS 2015 will be held at Camp Long in Aiken, SC, May 15–17. Registration is open January through mid April. We are delighted to say that Christopher Crowhurst will be with us as a featured mentor and that “Unkel” Dave Sides will be mentoring the ropes this year. A few other little surprises are also in the works; so take a peek at our website periodi- cally to check on new postings (http:www.traditionalpaddlersretreat.org).

4 2 T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org Spring in the South is lovely—a good place to start the 2015 Qajaq USA event circuit. Come join us!

Biography

Fern White and Fran Symes are passionate Greenland paddlers living in S.C.. Both enjoy learning new skills and techniques as well as encouraging and assisting enthusiasts. TIPS is the outcome of their goal to share and promote knowledge and the appreciation of traditional paddling and culture throughout the Southeast.

T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org 4 3 Adam Hansen, of Aasiaat, Greenland,

participant in several Qajaq USA events,

spends some of his down time making

qajaq models.

4 4 T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org These samples of Adam’s work,

displaying the same craftsmanship and

detail as their full-size equivalents, show

his love and reverence for Greenlandic

hunting culture. We are grateful to Adam

for sharing them with the Qajaq USA

community.

T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org 4 5 Deconstructing Greenland Kayaks: Form Follows Function, Part 2 by Ralph Colwell Young

So I get this idea that I can identify the most efficient displacement hull design by building scale models of different vessel designs and testing them in a tow tank under controlled conditions. I had a theory that Greenland kayaks are more efficient (lower drag) than modern displacement hull designs because they were designed to be silent. Si- lence requires laminar flow (as opposed to turbulent flow); eliminate the turbulence that creates noise, and you also eliminate the friction associated with turbulence. One key to eliminating turbulence is to avoid abrupt hull surface changes that would upset laminar flow, especially changes that are perpendicular to the direction of flow, a feature of all Greenland kayaks. The test was based on the premise that if you tow various models of the exact same length and displacement with the exact same force, the vessel with the most efficient hull design will have the lowest drag and will therefore be the fastest vessel. The test protocol was as follows:

1. Each model was 1 m long overall and scaled precisely from its original dimensions. Actual ships plans were used when possible; lines were taken off of existing vessels when plans were not available.

2. Each model had a displacement of exactly 1 kg. Weight was added to each model in the same location as mass was located in the original vessel (engine rooms, cargo hatches, cockpits).

3. Each vessel was pulled through a pool with a constant force using a weight and pulley system.

4. The time it took to traverse the full length of the pool was recorded.

Although the 1 m, 1 kg is a convenient standard, it was not arbitrary; the length-to-displacement ratios roughly cor- respond to a 20’ (6.1 m) kayak with a total displacement of 200 lb (90.7 kg), and the kayak models floated at close to normal freeboards.

The Contestants

I built eight models: two West Greenland kayaks, a Mackenzie River Delta kayak, an Aleutian Island iqyax (baidarka),

4 6 T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org a WWII U.S. Destroyer, a WWII Unterseeboot (U-Boat), a Chesapeake Bay Skipjack, and a Chesapeake Bay Hooper Is- land Draketail. The logic behind the selection of the kayak models was to have some representation of the spectrum of Arctic kayaks from East to West. The destroyer and U-boat are both hunter-killers, and just like kayaks, stealth, speed, and efficiency were critical to their missions, so I figured they would be worthy modern-day adversaries. The

Hooper Island Draketail originated at a time when marine engines had very limited horsepower; its long length, nar- row breadth, and deadrise bottom gave it the reputation as a fast and efficient work boat. And truth be told, when

I took the lines from the Draketail there was a skipjack right next to it, and I figured that every competition needs a

Cinderella. Ship design drawings or takeoff lines were available for all the models except the Skipjack and the Drake- tail; those lines were taken from existing boats at the Annapolis Maritime Museum in Eastport.

You may at this point question the validity of such a test, as well as the test protocol. Can you really scale down a ship to a small model and get accurate results? Is there really any way you can compare the hull of a kayak to the hull of a destroyer or a submarine and get meaningful information? Is towing a model in a pool with weights and pulleys an accepted engineering test methodology or at minimum based on sound engineering principles?

In fact, you absolutely can scale down a ship by a considerable factor and get meaningful results; it happens every day in dozens of very expensive and sophisticated tow tank facilities located around the world. Tow tank testing of models is an integral part in the development of modern seagoing vessels, and it has been in use to study the behavior of boats and ships for more than 400 years, attracting the attention of the likes of da Vinci, Newton, Frank- lin, and William Froude, who figured out how to scale the model results to full-size ship values (Froude 1888) As for a system of weights and pulleys pulling a model in a pool, they did this at MIT back in the 1950s, but they called it a gravity dynamometer (Unger 2004). One difference between modern tow tanks and the test at Delmarva is that the modern tow tanks use a moving carriage and a fixed attachment to the model, as opposed to the free-towing pro- cedure that we employed. Nonetheless, the engineering principles are sound, and scientific methods were followed.

Further, the objective was not to calculate actual values for the resistance of each hull shape, but rather to compare the differences of the hull resistance associated with the different hull designs to one another.

T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org 4 7 Figure 1. Disko Bay kayak replica (Catalog no. Figure 1. Disko Bay kayak replica (Catalog no. IV-A-375).The original kayak was in built in 1931 IV-A-375).The original kayak was in built in 1931 on the northwest coast of Greenland, but its de- on the northwest coast of Greenland, but its de- sign dates back to the 18th and 19th centuries. sign dates back to the 18th and 19th centuries. With a length of 16’ 4” (5 m), this kayak is one With a length of 16’ 4” (5 m), this kayak is one of the shorter versions of Greenland Kayaks, of the shorter versions of Greenland Kayaks, and it has a low-volume stern. The beam of the and it has a low-volume stern. The beam of the original kayak was 20–1/8” (.51 m) with a depth original kayak was 20–1/8” (.51 m) with a depth of 8–1/2” (.22 m). of 8–1/2” (.22 m).

Figure 2. Aleutian Island iqyax replica (photo courtesy of Mark Kaufman). The original (MAE 593-76) was built by the Unangax on the Aleu- tian Islands in the Bering Sea and was 19’ 1” (5.8 m) long, 17.1” (.43 m) wide and 8.3” (.22 m) deep. These vessels had to contend with broad expanses of open water, heavy seas, and high winds.

Figure 3. West Greenland kayak (Catalog no. ABDUA: 5736). The original kayak dates back to the 18th century and was significantly longer than the Disko Bay. This kayak is also more symmetrical with a higher volume stern. The original kayak was 19’1” (5.8 m) long with a beam of 17-1/4” (.44 m) and a depth of 9-1/8” (.23 m).

4 8 T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org Bifurcated Bow Function It is possible that the bifurcated bow of the Aleutian Island iqyax is a fea- ture designed in part to improve the straight-line tracking of the kayak. Many Figure 4. Mackenzie River kayak. Used in the relatively shallow waters of have speculated that the bottom half of the Mackenzie River Delta for caribou and whale hunting, these kayaks the bow cuts through waves efficiently, have significantly more volume than their Greenland counterparts. The original vessel was collected by Knud Rasmussen during the Fifth Thule the upper half of the bow is there to add Expedition and had a length of 16’ 6” (4.4 m), a breadth of 19.4” (.49 m), buoyancy if needed to prevent the bow and a depth of 9.4” (.24 m). from diving in a large wave. It is possible that the bifurcated bow also helps with tracking. For if the bow deviates from the desired path for any reason, and wa- ter pressure builds up on one side of the bow, the water pressure differential may be minimized as water from the high- pressure side of the bow passes through the bifurcated bow to the other side, making it easier to return to the desired path. Although this is just speculation on my part, there is a certain amount of Figure 5. WWII German Unterseeboot (U-Boat). The Type VII version seen logic that supports the premise. here was the workhorse in WWII, with over 700 boats launched. The type VIIC was 67 m (220’) long, 6.2 m (20’) wide, 9.6 m (31.5’) high; had a sur- faced cruising speed of 17 knots; and had a range of 8500 nautical miles.

Figure 6. DD692, USS Sumner, WWII destroyer. Introduced in 1940, 58 Sumner-class destroy- ers were built and saw service in WW II, Korea, and Vietnam. They were 369’ (112.5 m) long, with a beam of 41’ (12.5 m), and a draft of 19’ (5.8 m). They had a top speed of 34 knots and a cruising range of 6800 nautical miles at 15 knots.

T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org 4 9 Figure 7. Hooper Island Draketail. These long and lean Chesapeake Bay workboats were built around the beginning of the 20th century, when marine engines had limited horsepower and efficiency was important. Just like kayaks, there were many variations on the central theme. This vessel at the Annapolis Maritime museum is 40’ (12.2 m) long, 6’ 8” (2.0 m) wide, and 3’ 6” (1.1 m) high.

Figure 8. Chesapeake Bay skipjack. Built in the late 19th century, these oyster-dredging vessels were designed for the shallow waters of the bay and are significantly wider than their motor- ized counterparts. The original vessel design used in this test was 37’ (11.3 m) long [25’ (7.6 m) at the waterline], 8’ (2.4 m) wide, and 3’ 6” (1.1 m) high.

Test Protocol

The test was run at the pool at Camp Arrowhead during the 2014 Delmarva Paddler’s Retreat. At 75’ (22.75 m) long, the pool is long, calm, and protected from the wind. Two identical gravity-tow mechanisms, simple sets of weights and pulleys, were set up at the deep end of the pool. The tests were set up as series of races, with the winner of each race advancing to the next round. There were four competing brackets: the Eastern Arctic Kayaks, the Western Arctic

Kayaks, the North Atlantic Warships, and the Chesapeake Bay Workboats. The day before the race, trials were run to iron out any bugs in the models and tow apparatus.

Figure 9. The pool and the tow mechanism (aka gravity dynamometer).

5 0 T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org The Trial Runs

We hooked up the first model for a test run, and that’s when things started to go south. Maybe in retrospect I should have anticipated this, but I didn’t; I made the critical assumption that all the models would travel in a straight line.

Unfortunately, some of the kayak models had other ideas and meandered down the length of the pool. We were pulling little model boats with a thin nylon string through a pool; there are only two forces acting on the boat—the tension of the tow line and the resistance of the water. In my mind there was absolutely no reason that the kayaks should move in anything but a straight line. But when we tested the models, some of them went all over the place, taking crazy zigzag paths, sometimes almost perpendicular to the tow line. Figure 10 illustrates a typical route for the wayward kayak models versus the more directionally stable models.

Figure 10. Path followed by the West Greenland kayaks (upper) versus the Aleutian Island iqyax (lower).

The Aleutian Iqyax, the Hooper Island Draketail, the Skipjack, and the U-Boat traveled in reasonably straight lines, but the kayaks and the destroyer were all over the place. My immediate concern was that the zigzag patterns would invalidate the test: if each vessel doesn’t cover the same distance, there is no way of comparing the efficiency of one hull design with another. For example, a less efficient hull design that travels in a straight direction may have a faster time than a more efficient design that wanders. My secondary concern was that the Greenland kayaks weren’t going to win, invalidating my well-known contention that Greenland kayaks are some of the most sophisticated vessels ever built. I mean, really, this tow test was a slam dunk—you could just look at the models and see that the Green- land kayaks were the sleekest and most hydrodynamically efficient hulls. Or so I thought.

The questions then became: Why don’t the kayaks travel in a straight line, and once that question is answered, How do we make them travel in a straight line? Fortunately, my silly little zigzag boats attracted the attention of some very knowledgeable people. My sincerest thanks to all that worked on this issue, with special thanks to Jean, Anders, and Daniel for sticking with me till we figured it out that night. The basic flaw in the test protocol was the assump- tion that any vessel under tow would travel in a straight line. Anyone who has ever towed one boat from another probably knows that isn’t true; tug boat crews know that isn’t true; and I’m sure the whole naval architectural com-

T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org 5 1 munity knows it isn’t true; but I figured that the meandering of a vessel under tow was caused by outside influences like wind, tides, waves, the wake of the towing vessel, etc. It never occurred to me that the design of the hull plays a big role in the ability of a vessel to stay on a straight path, what we call tracking. But the truth is, it does, big time.

The following models meandered all over the place:

• Both West Greenland Kayaks

• The Mackenzie River Delta Kayak

• The WWII Sumner Class Destroyer

The following models more or less stayed on a straight path:

• The Hooper Island Draketail

• The Skipjack

• The WWII German U-Boat

• The Aleutian Island Iqyax

I assumed that there would be no external forces acting on the model other than the force pulling the model and the drag of the hull itself: no tide, no wind, no current, no paddling or other propulsion effects, nothing to force the model off of a straight path. In reality, minute unbalanced forces always exist, the model may not be perfectly sym- metrical, one side might be slightly smoother than the other side, there could be a very slight lean, or there might be a very slight breeze one way or the other. Any tiny imbalance will create a slightly higher water pressure on one side of the bow than the other, which will cause the bow to deviate ever so slightly from a straight path. This devia- tion results in even greater water pressure on that side of the kayak than the other, which causes the bow to move even more, which increases the pressure, which turns the bow, until eventually you are now traveling nearly perpen- dicular to the towing force. In control theory this is called positive feedback—a cause results in an effect that ampli- fies the cause, which amplifies the effect until something burns up, explodes, or crashes. In the case of the kayak models, they would veer off course by 70 to 90 degrees and slow to a near stop, at which point the water pressures would equalize and they would slowly turn back in the direction of the tow mechanism. Of course, now the pressure is building on the opposite side of the kayak, so it would veer off in the opposite direction until it stalled and ran back the other way.

5 2 T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org Tow Tank Testing, William Froude, and the Effect on Naval Architecture

Figure 11. Forces that caused the models to zigzag.

Early tow testing. (Source: http:// The models that tracked in a more or less straight line had some media.efluids.com/galleries/ feature like a keel or a stern plate (Figure 12) that extends well below educational?medium=224.) the waterline. These features provide a built-in resistance to the Naval architects, shipbuilders, and sci- positive-feedback turning bias that haunted the other four models entists have been using tow tanks to im- by balancing forces on the bow and the stern. At the same time that prove hull designs for hundreds of years, water pressure is building at the bow, counteracting water pressure but until the late 1800s it was mostly an empirical exercise, meaning that knowl- is building at the stern, and the vessel travels in a straight path. The edge was obtained though observation vessels that meandered had minimal submerged surface area at the of the model’s behavior and comparison stern and offered little resistance to turning moments. It all seems so of one design to another, as opposed to obtaining knowledge through the simple and obvious now. application of scientific theory or first principles of engineering or physics.

Naval architecture relied on rules of thumb and wisdom obtained through experience. The basic problem was that it was not possible to extrapolate the results of a tow tank test to predict the behavior of a full-size vessel. You could experiment all you wanted with models, but no one could accurately predict how the big version would behave based on Figure 12. Straight tracking hull features of the iqyax. Note the presence the behavior of the model. Ship builders of the stern plate counteracts uneven pressures at the bow. were understandably reluctant to build full-size experimental vessels because

T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org 5 3 of the cost and the risk of failure, so hull designs evolved slowly compared with other emerging technologies. For example, steam engines evolved from bench-top models to massive propul- sion systems in a few decades, while hull designs barely changed at all.

Enter William Froude. After a long and successful career as a “practical” civil engineer, Her Majesty’s Navy asked him Figure 13. Hull differences between the Disko Bay kayak and the Aleutian to help solve a fundamental problem Island iqyax. Note that the iqyax has considerably more surface area below the waterline at the stern, which helps keep the iqyax travel in a that was hindering the emerging steam- straight line. Also note that the iqyax has considerably less surface area ship industry. The problem was that the above the waterline at both the bow and stern, reducing the effects of a ship builders didn’t know how much beam wind. horsepower was required to propel their ships at the desired speeds. It was easy In keeping with the theme of form following function, it starts mak- to design a steam engine to a specified ing sense. A German U-boat doesn’t need to be highly maneuver- horsepower rating, but it was almost im- possible to calculate how much horse- able—its function is to track straight so its torpedoes get a clean power was needed. This issue wasn’t launch. If it needs to evade the enemy it dives. Both the skipjacks that important to sailboats—you can’t and draketails were oyster-dredging machines with limited crews, make more horsepower than the wind can provide, so you basically design an sometimes only one man. If the boat would travel in a straight line efficient hull and live with the results. on its own, that’s one less job the crew had to worry about. I’m go- But steamships were different. Although ing to speculate that because the Unangax lived on islands in a sea the British shipbuilding industry in the mid 1800s was able to build bigger and prone to powerful storms, high winds, and very high seas, a vessel bigger ships, without understanding the that tracked well, was less prone to weathercocking, and actually relationship between a ship’s length, made use of a following sea was more important than a vessel that form, and drag, it couldn’t know what horsepower engines would be required. was highly maneuverable. For the models without keels or transom Mr. Froude had a well-deserved reputa- plates, the logic certainly holds true: with a WWII destroyer, ma- tion as a problem solver, having pre- neuverability was paramount for this fighting vessel. If you are the viously addressed the issue of ship’s rolling. Kayaks are not the only seagoing captain of a destroyer and two torpedoes are bearing down on your vessels that are subject to capsize— ship, the last thing you need is for the hull to be fighting you when early steam ships were subject to un- you are trying to take evasive actions. With respect to the Greenland expected capsizes, and Froude helped

5 4 T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org and Mackenzie River kayaks, I have to assume that the Inuit placed a to understand the issue. From Froude’s 1880 obituary (http://www.gracesguide. greater value on maneuverability then they did on tracking, which co.uk/William_Froude): suggests that maneuvering in and around prey and icebergs and rocky shorelines was more important than being an efficient, long- In his younger days, when at Bristol, he saw much of the “Great Western” range cruising machine. I had speculated differently, believing that and “Great Britain” steamships, and expanding the hunting range was more important than maneuver- during the construction of the Great ability, and clearly I was wrong. Eastern he, at Mr. Brunel’s request, undertook the investigation of the rolling of ships. His researches on Back to the test protocol. Once we figured out that tracking (or this subject at once attracted atten- lack thereof) was a function of hull design and not a symptom of a tion. The behaviour of waves and of a ship among waves had hitherto flawed test protocol, we abandoned any thoughts of modifying the been looked upon either as an in- test protocol to produce the “desired” results. We had considered at- soluble problem, or as one in which taching a line to the stern of each model to act as a sea anchor, add- the solution arrived at would have no real counterpart in the actual circum- ing drag to the stern so the bow would stay pointed at the tow line, stances of practical experience. Mr. and also considered running taut piano wire across the pool to force Froude showed how both the motion the models to stay on a straight path, but in the end we decided to of the waves and of vessels could be reduced to rule, and could be math- let it be. After all, the challenge was to identify the most efficient hull ematically, and indeed mechanically, design, and if tracking is part of the efficiency calculation, then we explained. He investigated the mat- should allow the test protocol to incorporate the tracking charac- ter in its general features, and also in many of the intricacies involved in teristics of the hull absent outside interference. We did increase the the behaviour of abnormal forms of pulling force slightly, and as expected, this improved the tracking of ships; and further, by his aptness in all vessels. The main factor in adjusting force was to achieve a speed experimental inquiry and by his me- chanical skill, he was able to devise that was close to but below the hull speed for all models. We experi- apparatus which measured quantita- mented with different weights and settled at 8 ounces (227 grams), tively the behaviour and characteris- which corresponded to a towing force of 1 ounce (28.3 grams) with- tics of ships rolling in still water and among waves, and gave at the same out factoring in resistance losses due to the pulley system. time an accurate record of the form of the waves in which the vessel was Race Results at the time oscillating.

Eastern Arctic Class With a modest stipend from the Brit- In one of the more interesting races of the events, both Greenland

T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org 5 5 kayaks meandered down the pool, even colliding with one another ish government he delved into under- standing and ultimately quantifying the at one point. ABDUA: 5736 beat the Disko Bay kayak by .3 seconds fundamental physics of the resistance (37.29 seconds versus 37.59 seconds), a margin of less than 1%. encountered by a ship underway, and he did it with his own personal tow tank. And being a practical engineer, he did it methodically, building the science of maritime fluid dynamics from the water up. Froude figured out that resistance comprises three elements: friction Figure 14. KOG 17 edging out the Disko Bay. between the hull and water, the energy required to move water out of the way (wave making), and energy related to Western Arctic Class eddy currents created by the hull. It was Froude who first learned that fric- The Aleutian Iqyax easily bested the Mackenzie River Delta kayak, tional resistance is not constant over the 37.72 seconds versus 40.85 seconds. The Iqyax traveled straight; the length of the vessel, but decreases far- Mackenzie River Delta kayak did not. ther away from the bow. He speculated that if there is friction between the hull and the water it is traveling through, then inertia will be transferred from the hull to the water. If inertia is transferred to the water, then a layer of the water will start to flow in the same direction of the hull’s motion. If the water moves in concert with the hull, friction is reduced. The boundary layer of water speeds up as you look down the length of the hull, so by the time you get to the stern of a long vessel the water is moving almost as fast as the hull. What that means is that there is less drag at the rear of the ship than there is at the bow, and fric- tional resistance is not a linear function Figure 15. Iqyax (left) versus the Mackenzie River kayak. Note that the of the length of this ship. He used his Iqyax is tracking straight, but the Mackenzie River kayak is not. knowledge of physics and fluid dynam- ics to prepare his theories, he proved North Atlantic Class them by towing hundreds of planks of Upon release, the U-boat fell over on its side (very poor initial stabil- wood of varying lengths thousands of

5 6 T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org ity) but did manage to travel in a relatively straight line, finishing times, measuring the velocity and resis- tance of the planks, and quantifying the in 37.72 seconds. The destroyer immediately veered of course and relationship. finished in 48 seconds even.

Once he had frictional resistance figured out, he could look at the other aspects Chesapeake Class of drag, the displacement of water, also Both the Hooper Island Draketail and the skipjack were very well known as wave-making resistance. And behaved, with only minor deviations in direction. The Draketail was using his tow tank, he could quantify the energy associated with moving wa- significantly faster than its broader counterpart, 39.18 seconds versus ter out of the way (wave-making resis- 52.10 seconds. tance). He described critical hull speeds and quantified the relationship between hull length and critical speed. He deter- Round Two mined that hull shapes affect the critical ABDUA: 5736 was up against the Iqyax. They both recorded fast speed of the hull. He was able to solve times, but in the end the Iqyax bested the wanderlust Greenland the problem of scaling the results of his models to precise estimates for the full- kayak by more than a second, 34.38 seconds versus 35.78 seconds. size ships. He identified eddy current The U-Boat and the Draketail went head to head in a nail biter, the making as a third factor in calculating submarine again falling over on its side but traveling straight. The ship resistance. And after a decade of testing and quantifying, he achieved the Draketail cut a straight path to the finish line, edging out the subma- goal the industry asked him to solve: if rine 39.42 seconds to 40.22 seconds. you gave him the dimensions of the ship you wanted to build and told him how fast you wanted it to go, he could tell The Final you how much horsepower you needed. The Iqyax opened the door for an upset with a poor start and a me- In less than 20 years Froude moved andering path and its slowest time of 38.91 seconds, but the Drake- naval architecture from a 2000-year-old empirical practice to a first-principle tail also recorded its slowest time (42.75 seconds), losing by almost 4 engineering discipline. Again, from his seconds. The Iqyax is now officially the world’s fastest 1 m long, 1 kg obituary: displacement vessel. The amount of mechanical skill, as well as of theoretical acuteness, which has been exhibited in all this work has placed Mr. Froude in the foremost rank of all investigators on this subject. No one, indeed, has ever

T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org 5 7 Analysis done more, either theoretically or practically, for the accurate determi- Table 1 shows the fastest times for each model. nation of a ship’s motion, whether Table 1. Race results in propulsion or in waves, than Mr. Froude. Without undervaluing other modern writers, it is not too much to say that his investigations at present take completely the lead in this very important question-most important to a maritime nation.

For the engineers and naval architects Under this test protocol, the Aleutian Island iqyax and the West or just people curious to see how a real Greenland kayaks were considerably faster than the modern vessels engineer thinks, you can download some of his original technical papers at: with the exception of the U-Boat. The iqyax’s straight-line track- https://ia601201.us.archive.org/26/items/ ing gave it a significant advantage over the West Greenland kayaks navalprofessiona23unit/navalprofes- that meandered, although the West Greenland kayaks did appear siona23unit.pdf. to be moving at a higher speed. It is possible that the U-boat would be a more efficient design if properly ballasted—during the tests the U-boat leaned heavily (poor primary stability). Accordingly, my conclusion is that the Aleutian Island iqyax’s hull design is the most efficient hull design of the models tested, per this test protocol, with the Greenland kayaks being close behind. I believe that this test proves that the Unangan and Inuit peoples designed and built seagoing hunter-killer vessels with a more efficient hull design than William Froude and his tow tank. (Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/ wartime Germany and the United States, which is quite an achieve- wiki/File:William_Froude_and_the_ Admiralty%27s_First_Naval_Test_Tank_at_ ment when you think about it. Torquay,_Devon,_C_1872_HU82582.jpg.)

Figure 16. The fastest 1 m kayak—the Aleutian iqyax.

5 8 T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org What Comes Next?

The Iqyax will be back to defend its title at next year’s Delmarva Paddler’s Retreat, and the competition is open to anyone who wants to build models. And if I can figure out how to build a poor man’s wave-making machine, we may introduce sea trials.

Author’s Postscript

Ok, it’s pretty obvious that I bit off more than I could chew on this one. But it isn’t about me; it’s about an isolated indigenous society designing and building an extremely sophisticated watercraft in the absence of basic things like iron, building supplies, or the whole Phoenician-Egyptian-Greek-Roman-European knowledge base. And the truth is, in spite of the deficiencies of the test protocol and the tracking issues, the kayaks and the iqyax outperformed their modern rivals. Until someone proves differently, I am going to argue that the Inuit watercraft are the most efficient displacement hulls that man has ever designed, period. The arguments that other vessels were designed to carry more cargo or fuel or that they were designed to go faster than their critical hull speeds can be reworded as follows: “We sacrificed a small degree of efficiency at normal cruising speeds in order to….” There were limited compromises with the Inuit hull designs—little extra space to carry food or clothing or other supplies, minimal buoyancy to keep the paddler dry, no extra width to prevent capsizes—few if any compromises. And although the

Greenland kayak and Aleutian iqyax were designed for significantly different sea conditions and had considerably different tracking characteristics, they had very similar test results. Having said that, one look at the two vessels is all it takes to see the obvious differences. The Greenland kayak has hard chines, the iqyax has a rounded hull. The lon- gitudinal center of gravity of the iqyax appears to be farther aft than that of the Greenland kayak, and the bow and stern couldn’t be more different. So, in the interest of research, development, and my own amusement, I am going to build a full size iqyax with the same length overall as my Disko Bay kayak and run them through a series of tests to better understand how the differences in hull design affect performance, efficiency, tracking, stability, etc. and document my findings in the next issue of the Masik.

Finally, I am beginning to see Inuit kayak and iqyax as testaments to the core intelligence of man, our brain’s capac- ity to comprehend and manage complex physical phenomena outside of the classic scientific/engineering realm.

The more I attempt (and fail) to apply basic engineering analysis methods to their kayaks, the more I appreciate the level of knowledge the builders must have had—knowledge that transcends equations or formulas—to the point

T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org 5 9 that I am starting to question my own approach to this research. When I started down this path Brian Schulz advised me that I was wasting my time; if I really wanted to learn about kayaks I should spend more time paddling. Then again, Harvey Golden said in a recent post on Qajaq USA: “The more I've paddled a variety of kayaks, the more I realize that many elements contribute to handling—a kayak is a tremendous amount of systems playing off of each other. To put it more bluntly and honestly, the more I paddle, the less I really know about kayak design.” I guess time will tell where this journey will take me.

Peer-Review Comments

Anders Thygesen

When I did my long distance Iqyax trip along the Norway coast (3000 km. of paddling, 76 days) I had planned well. I wanted speed and tracking from my Iqyax. So I built it 540 cm. long and 51 cm. wide. I thought this would give me good speed, fair maneuvering and OK balance. And it did. However. I felt the advantages the most when the sea was completely calm, which it was only now and then. So when evaluating my trip, I felt I would have been better off with a wider shorter Iqyax. Why? Because what really slows you is lack of tracking. And when paddling following seas and side waves and all kinds of mixes of these, I felt a better choice could have been the slightly shorter wider

Iqyax. So what I try to say is that a shorter (worse tracking) kayak can be a better choice and (with the aid of the paddle of course) actually track better in a lot of conditions likely to occur because it is easier to maneuver. That in different conditions, day in and day out, over time, adding together all the days out, the Greenland kayak could be paddled more efficiently than the Iqyax in your test?

Author’s Response

Anders brings out a good point. In an effort to reduce the number of variables in the test, we used a calm pool absent of any wind. So all we learned is that in calm water with no wind the Iqyax travels straighter and faster. Great laboratory setting, but not very representative of real-world conditions. When we do this again we will introduce waves and wind.

Harvey Golden

Thank you for the attached paper on hull design and efficiency. I’m under a bit of time crunch with various projects, so am not good for a thorough analysis or commentary, but that said, I did read the paper through. I won’t dither

6 0 T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org about our differing opinions (in some areas), as opinions are just opinions, but one comment stood out: You explain the kayak types as representing the full spectrum of types from East to West. You do have examples from the far west, the middle, and the east, but this is very far from a “full-spectrum.” The Mackenzie delta kayak is even a bit of an anomaly for its shape/region, but it is still as good as any to include. I know the Aleut and Greenland kayaks are included very deliberately, and the Mackenzie delta kayak is perhaps more arbitrary, but that shouldn’t detract at all from its inclusion (and I’m happy to see the type getting some attention). Briefly, it would take no less than 10–12 different kayak types for me to consider it a full spectrum.

The one general comment I would like to make is regarding the propulsion of kayaks vs. the other boat types tested.

I realize that for the tests you conducted it is not really a point of concern, but considering the weaving that some of the kayaks did, it may be useful to address the fact that kayaks are given directional thrust on alternating sides, and this thrust is constantly being adjusted per the pilot’s desire (even subconsciously). So a kayak that tracks poorly in a tow-test may exhibit very little of this tendency on the water-—and if so, probably corrects quite easily. (... not sure where this leads me with the destroyer’s meandering....).

Anyhow, I enjoyed reading it and certainly learned more than a few things. I hope my comments are of some help.

All the best,

Harvey

P.S. Nice to see that U-boats still roll over in the presence of U.S. Destroyers.

Author’s Response

Harvey is right; I had a token representation of the spectrum of Arctic kayaks. He is also right about the role of the paddler. The kayak is half of a human-machine system; a ship is a mechanical system controlled by a human. You can test a ship for things like efficiency and maneuverability and basically discount the role of humans. The performance of a kayak is dependent on the skill of the paddler, something not included in this test protocol. I think that these tests did provide some valid information, but there is an entire dimension of performance that these tests over- look—the dimension of a human-machine system—and that dimension that will most likely defy quantification. The next article will explore this issue in greater detail.

T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org 6 1 Nick Schade

Stealth is critical, but if you move an object through the water at 1/4 mph it isn’t going to make much noise, and if you try to go at 10 knots, chances are you will be noticed. So, how fast does a seal hunter approach a seal? How does your data correspond to the stalking speed of a hunting kayak? It matters because a design that is quiet at one speed may be noisy at another. Performance characteristics at one speed are not transferable to all speeds. If you don’t test at the right speed, you are not learning anything about the performance [of the vessel] as it is designed to be used.

You talked about laminar flow. How do you know laminar flow is quieter than turbulent flow? It is logical that it might be, but where is the evidence? Why did you choose to discuss laminar flow instead of wake waves, or perhaps the acoustic properties of seal skin which may also influence stealth? Does approach speed affect noise produced by the frame (creaking)? If laminar flow is important why is reducing abrupt line changes more critical than surface texture? You chose one thing (laminar flow) to consider, apparently at random, then chose one aspect of it (abrupt changes) apparently at random, and then developed a test idea that may or may not actually give good results re- garding the properties you claimed interest in.

Personally, I suspect the noisiest, most attention grabbing action in the hunt is the use of the paddle. If the hunter is moving with enough stealth that the paddle doesn’t scare the seal, the noise from the kayak will not matter. Skin, by its nature is quiet.

You have thrown ideas out there without relating it back to any reality. “Stealth” isn’t just a word, it corresponds to an actual physical action performed by a hunter approaching a seal. What is that action? What speed in feet per sec- ond does that correspond to in your models? If you test at an equivalent speed of 3 knots and the hunter approach- es a seal at less than 1 knot, you have not tested the design at the speed it is optimized to be the most stealthy. Are you then comparing it to a destroyer model at an equivalent speed of 10 knots when the design is meant to go 30 knots. There is no correspondence between the intended use of the design and the speed at which you are testing.

You cite Taylor, Pederson, and Arima in this email, but what piece of information from them relates to the test you performed? Yes, the kayak has to move so a measurable speed is appropriate, but beyond that your test is complete- ly divorced from the reality of hunting a seal. If you have the information, share it in the article, don’t assume every-

6 2 T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org one knows. The validity of your ideas can not be evaluated without knowing your initial assumptions.

All these comments are based on the first paragraph. I don’t have the time to go through all the paragraphs which each bring up a series of similar comments.

I am glad you are interested in studying Inuit kayaks. It is a rich vein. What I don’t like is seeing half baked ideas pub- lished in the Qajaq USA newsletter as if they are based on solid research and technical understanding. Other people will see your speculations and take them seriously. It’s published, therefore it must be true. You obviously feel your ideas have merit and others will as well. Unfortunately, you rely on a lot of unsubstantiated ideas and incorrect premises resulting in unsupported conclusions. I would rather qajaq fans be exposed to more fully realized informa- tion and you kept your notions to yourself until they were better developed.

Regards

Author’s Response

With respect to speed:

I am going to take the position that there is no single speed or set of speeds for hunting a seal; each aspect of the hunt and the specific situation may require a different speed, degree of silence, or ability to maneuver. For example, there may be an extended journey to reach the hunting grounds followed by a period of stalking to approach the prey. Even if we just look at the stalking phase, the approach may vary depending on the situation. Is the hunter approaching seals that are sleeping on an ice floe, or are the seals actively feeding? Is the hunter trying to follow the seal and overtake it or going to race to a point where he thinks it will surface? Is he trying to finish off a wounded animal, or maneuvering to avoid its charges? To the Inuit this was just what they did; to an engineer this is compli- cated stuff.

Nick has a valid point, and it comes down to context. I am testing hull designs within the context of smooth water, no winds, and a fixed propulsion force. But how does that context compare with the context of what the original vessel was designed to do? Anders brought up a very similar concern—the iqyax performed well in calm water but calm water was his exception, not the rule. And so I concede that these tests provide limited information from that

T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org 6 3 perspective. Destroyers and U-boats were designed to operate in the rough seas of the North Atlantic. Greenland,

Mackenzie River, and Aleutian kayaks were designed to operate in unpredictable Arctic sea conditions. The Chesa- peake Bay has its own version of nasty. I don’t think Nick’s perspective invalidates the test results, but it certainly does qualify them to only being applicable to calm conditions with no wind with that specific propulsion force.

With respect to laminar flow:

Nick is correct; there are situations where turbulent flow offers less resistance than laminar flow, a dimpled golf ball in flight being the most common example. However, air is a compressible fluid, water is not, and the speed of a golf ball in flight is several orders of magnitude greater than a kayak at any achievable speed, so I will argue that within the context of a kayak traveling through water, laminar flow constitutes the most efficient and most desirable condi- tion, producing the least amount of noise and generating the least amount of resistance to motion. I will also argue that the shape of the hull is the single most important characteristic of the vessel when it comes down to efficiency.

Surface texture matters, but hull design matters more.

With respect to Wake Waves:

Per William Froude, who literally wrote the book on ship resistance, there are three elements to friction: the resis- tance of the hull passing through the water, the energy required to displace water out of the way, and eddy currents caused by protuberances in the hull. When you move water out of the way, what Nick refers to as wake waves, you can do it slowly and smoothly (laminar flow), or you can do it more abruptly, which creates turbulent flow. The test protocol evaluated total resistance including friction, wave making, and eddy making, so I guess my answer is that the test did address wave-making resistance. I have no way of proving this, but I suspect that a hull designed spe- cifically to prevent turbulent flow might also (coincidently?) minimize the amount of energy required to move the water out of the way.

With respect to seal skin:

I totally believe that seal skin is one of the lowest friction materials you could ever use for an underwater vessel; millions of years of natural selection would favor the fastest and most efficient seals. There is a field of research that examines the differences between rigid and compliant surfaces on surface drag and some evidence that a compli- ant surface such as shark skin could reduce surface drag by as much as 10% (Dean and Bhushan 2010). I can only

6 4 T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org hope I have the resources and longevity to research that aspect of kayaks. However, this test protocol was designed to evaluate a single aspect of naval architecture, hull design, and every other variable (length, displacement, towing force, and hull surface) was fixed.

With respect to creaking frames:

I have never noticed any creaking from my Disko Bay kayak, and it is 5 years old and been through several hundred hours of use. Then again, my hearing is not what it used to be, and it was never as good as a seal under water, so you may have a point there.

With respect to paddle noise:

Per “Kayak Hunting in the East Canadian Arctic as told by Uyarasuk and Piugaattuk,” edited by Eugene Arima, Qajaq

Journal 1 (July 2003): “As we headed for home we would go side by side and he would tell me thing that I needed to needed to know. All the time there would be no noise from the paddle as he kayaked onwards.”

With respect to design speeds of the original vessels:

Ok, this is a really complicated subject; I have no doubt that any number of universities or research institutes could burn though $100,000 studying this and then conclude: “More research is required.” So I will offer my perspective and leave it at that:

1. Each model was exactly 1 m long.

2. Each model had a displacement of exactly 1 kg.

3. Each model was towed with the exact same force.

4. Each model was scaled to the precise dimensions of its original vessel.

5. The original vessels were all displacement hull designs and, with the exception of the destroyer, were designed

to cruise at or below their critical hull speeds.

Now I agree that each vessel had a specific purpose in mind when it was built, and efficiency may have not been of paramount importance. For example, the skipjack was designed to dredge oysters under sail in shallow water. They couldn’t use a deep keel without running aground, so they built the ship with a wide beam so it wouldn’t tip over.

T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org 6 5 Did they sacrifice efficiency for stability? Absolutely—the Skipjack was the slowest boat of the lot. Was the compro- mise worth it? Absolutely—hundreds of watermen made a living off of these boats, and millions of oysters made their way on to our plates. Did the U.S. Navy compromise hull efficiency so as to be able to carry more sailors, muni- tions, weapons, fuel, etc.? No doubt in my mind. What good is a highly efficient destroyer hull with no sailors and no weapons? What I think these tests suggest is that the Inuit minimized the extent of compromises from a perfect de- sign in the shapes of their hulls. Would it be nice to have a kayak that did not tip over with the slightest imbalance?

Would it be nice to have a kayak that had enough volume to carry a meal or two, or some additional clothes in the event I got wet and needed to get dry in a hurry? No doubt. But the fact is that the Inuit did not compromise on the efficiency of the hull design for creature comforts; apparently, that was not an option. Of course I am generalizing here. The Mackenzie River kayak had plenty of volume to carry all sorts of things, as we saw in Nanook of the North, and the iqyax was expanded to two and even three cockpits so as to carry Russian hunters and a cargo of dead sea otters, but in my opinion the basic West Greenland hunting kayak was pretty much a bare-bones hunting machine with a near optimal hull design.

Reflectively, this is not really about how efficient the hull design of Greenland kayaks are; it’s really more about survival in one of the most hostile environments on Earth. The Inuit would probably have been perfectly happy slowly sailing Skipjacks around harpooning seals, hauling them onto the deck, and slowly returning home, but that was not an option. Greenland kayaks were no-compromise hunter-killers because that is what survival in the Arctic demanded.

With regard to half-baked ideas:

The stated purpose of my research and articles is to prove that the kayaks produced by the Inuit are among the most sophisticated vessels ever built. From the very first time that European explorers encountered the Inuit kayak- ers the vessels, we have been praising various aspects of the kayak and their Inuit partners, and rightly so. We all know there is something special about Greenland kayaks, which is why there is a Qajaq USA. All I am trying to do is prove it using current accepted engineering analysis methods.

This endeavor has taken a lot more time than I ever expected. You were there when it started—we were debating the pros and cons of hard chines at the Wooden Boat School. Back then I had no idea how little I really knew about

6 6 T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org naval architecture. I thought that because I had a degree in marine engineering and slept through two semesters of naval architecture I wouldn’t have much trouble figuring it out. Five years later I feel like I am moving backwards:

I keep encountering complexities that I don’t understand and can’t explain. When I get to that point, I take my best cut at the explanation, introduce the idea as a speculation, and wait for the feedback. The promotion of any new idea must face trial by ordeal. If it survives the ordeal, it meets the standard of acceptance. And please take this as a compliment: You, sir, are an ordeal. But I like you, and I respect your opinions. This is my hobby; it is your livelihood. I feel like you have one foot in the modern engineering world and one foot in the empirical Inuit world, and you have a depth of knowledge few people obtain. And I like the challenge; if I can get it by you it must be true. So I want to thank you for your comments and respectfully request that you promise to keep calling me out when you feel I’m mistaken.

Len Thunberg

My comments will be somewhat random and not as organized as I would like, but I’m afraid it’s all I have time for at the moment.

Would it be possible to include photos of all the models?

I commend your efforts to organize some sort of poor man’s tank testing to evaluate the resistance of several models. Unfortunately, model tank testing is a very elaborate and delicate science—not easily accomplished on the cheap. I wrote the model testing program for the Coast Guard’s Hamilton Class of ships and spent many hours at the

David Taylor Model Basin and at the tank at Wageningen, the Netherlands, observing various aspects of the test- ing. Unless things have changed since the sixties, modern tank testing methods pretty much constrain the model laterally, so there is no chance of the model following a wandering path. This means that the model’s maneuvering characteristics are decoupled from the resistance being measured. With your swimming pool setup, there was no way of separating those characteristics. I think you did as good a job as you could have with the materials and ap- proach incorporated.

By making all the models the same length and displacement I’m guessing that some of the models were not oper- ating at their design drafts, meaning that they were not operating at their design conditions, making it difficult to

T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org 6 7 say that one design was more efficient than another. It would be interesting to know how the model drafts deviated from the design drafts.

Ships like destroyers, for dry docking reasons, are designed with a straight keel, forcing more wetted surface than would have resulted with a rockered keel. Perhaps that would not have been much of a factor at the speed/length ratio at which you were towing.

With regard to tracking, I think the characteristics that make for a faster hull (greater length/beam ratio) will gener- ally degrade maneuverability. Tracking and weathercocking are not necessarily related. A hull that trends to track well (no wind) can still weathercock significantly. Conversely, a maneuverable kayak can be designed to be very free of weathercocking—as evidenced by Brian Schulz’s F1 design.

It would be of interest to know what average speed/length ratio was achieved in each of the tests.

With regard to future tests, I believe any sailboat model would be a waste of time. The functions of a sailboat design are so different from that of an internally powered craft that it would be the ultimate apples and oranges compari- son.

Thanks for your tribute to William Froude. He was truly an outstanding researcher. I am puzzled, however, by your reference to his discovering that frictional resistance decreased with distance from the bow. I have trouble picturing how this could have been measured in his day. Perhaps this was a theoretical analysis. I admit to not having read much about Froude’s methods (I just used his results a lot in the earlier part of my design career ;-)).

Author’s Response

With regard to towing methods:

Len is absolutely correct; modern tow tanks do restrict the model from moving by fixing them directly to a towing carriage. They also use very sensitive instruments to measure the forces that would cause the model deviate from a straight and level path, so these models would not be allowed to wander, but there would be a measurement of lat- eral forces that would cause wandering (yaw). They also measure forces that would cause pitch and roll. I’m not sure

6 8 T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org if the whole positive-feedback phenomena that we observed would be captured or not. As seen from our simple test, it would be extremely difficult to obtain precise data from our test protocol because it allowed the model to wander about the tank. In our case even the simplest of data, the time for each model to travel a fixed distance, was characterized by a wide distribution of data. A fixed carriage tow tank would undoubtedly produce more repeatable results. And honestly, if I had known ahead of time that the models would wander around like they did I probably would have abandoned the whole exercise early on because of the uncertainty elements that are introduced by the protocol. I naively believed that they would naturally travel in a straight line because the only external forces are the tow line, a fixed linear force, and the drag forces created by the hull. The implied assumption is that the resistance forces are both linear and symmetrical about whichever plane of reference you look at. I knew that side-to-side symmetry was very important, and I went to considerable lengths to produce models that were as symmetrical as possible (meaning that manufacturing defects were random). I thought that by maintaining symmetry the forces that acted laterally would be balanced and the sum of the resultant forces would be lined up with the towing force.

But had I abandoned the free flow test I never would have observed the effects of the positive-feedback phenom- ena. I mean, in the real world I knew that it was important to keep the bow pointed directly at the point of reference or desired heading and that the farther you deviated from the desired heading the harder it is to get back on that heading, but I never really understood or appreciated the forces that were involved. Now that I do, I pay way more attention to my headings.

With regard to design drafts:

Again, Len is correct; the other vessels were designed to carry a lot more cargo than kayaks were. The skipjack was designed to carry tons of oysters, and the model in this test was floating on the surface of the water, nowhere near its design draft. The other models were not that far off—the submarine looked like it was pretty close to its surfaced draft. But the only way I could get all models to sink to their normal drafts would have required using a different amount of ballast on each model and that would invalidate the test results. The basic question I tried to answer was, all other things being equal, which hull design is the most efficient, and I believe the test results are valid.

Another way of asking the same question might be: Why didn’t the Inuit design their kayaks to carry more cargo?

There was no room for food, extra clothes, supplies, etc.; the Greenland kayaks were bare bone essentials-only wa- tercraft. In my mind the answer has to be that their survival depended in part on their ability to hunt and kill marine mammals, and when survival is on the line you don’t make compromises. Again, this is a generalization that applies

T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org 6 9 mostly to the West Greenland hunting kayaks; other Arctic kayaks did have extra volume to carry prey, cargo, and even passengers.

With regard to the destroyer hull:

When I built the destroyer model I was surprised how much “rocker” there was in the hull.

The figure above shows the hull profile. The back third of the hull comes up to the waterline, what we call rocker.

I think that feature provides the destroyer the maneuverability we observed. I’m not sure where the pivot point is in this vessel, but if we assume it is somewhere forward of amidships, it would make sense not to have a lot of hull below the waterline at the stern. As we saw with the models, turning the bow one direction or another creates a positive-feedback effect where the ship wants to turn more in the same direction as the original deviation. If the destroyer hull did not have the rear rocker, the submerged stern would provide a force opposing the turn. I keep thinking of those clips from Victory at Sea where a squadron of destroyers would execute a flank turn, and they seemed to change course by 90 degrees in a few boat lengths, or the scenes in the movies where a submarine fires two torpedoes at the broadside of a destroyer, and the destroyer turns into the path of the torpedoes and they go on either side of the ship.

With regard to tracking and weathercocking:

I agree with the idea that vessels with a large length-to-breadth width will tend to be more efficient in straight-line motion and will be less maneuverable than a shorter and wider vessel, but I’m not sure about a vessel the same length but just wider. I think the most important thing I learned from these tests is that I am only scratching at the surface on this sphere of knowledge, and I have a whole lot more to learn before I can say I understand this stuff.

7 0 T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org With regard to speed to length:

After observing the wide distribution of data associated with the test runs I decided to minimize the amount of data analysis; the uncertainty in the data would make any analysis results questionable.

What is unquestionable is that the iqyax was the fastest vessel using this test protocol, the West Greenland kayaks were right behind the iqyax, and all the other vessels were considerably slower. But, just for reference sake, the length-to-width ratios for the original vessels in this test are as follows:

With regard to sailboats:

Agreed. I want to learn more about sailboats because we spent thousands of years developing the hull shapes of sailboats using empirical knowledge, and the “fineness” of the lines has been refined to perfection, but this is prob- ably not the right context to pursue.

With regard to Froude:

I read more than 50 papers or articles about hull speed and found them more or less incomprehensible. I’m sure somebody understands all those equations, but I don’t. I finally uncovered Froude’s original technical papers and within days started to really understand what is going on. It’s not just how he presents his findings, it’s the system- atic way that he analyzed problems, developed theories to explain the phenomena, and then formulated tests to confirm or deny his theories. For example, he reasoned that the friction that a hull imparts on water results in inertia being transferred to the water. If inertia is being transferred to the water, the water will start to move. Insofar as this inertia is being transferred to the water over the entire length of the hull, the water will pick up speed over the length of the hull, so that by the time you reach the stern of a long vessel the boundary layer of water will be travel- ing almost as fast as the vessel itself. Froude speculated that if that was true, then the frictional loses per square foot of wetted surface area at the stern would be much less than the frictional losses at the bow because the differential

T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org 7 1 in speed between the hull and the water would be significantly less at the stern than at the bow. And he proved it using his own personal tow tank by towing planks of wood. He kept the width and thickness of the boards constant, varied the length, and ran hundreds of tests, measuring the resistance for each board at various speeds. He plotted the data, saw that he was right, and developed formulas that are still in use today.

Ben Fuller

Ralph,

I did have a read through on your article.

What strikes me is that hull shape resistance curves vary according to their speed. So for example a hull paddled at 3 knots may take less force than a second hull at that same speed but require much more at 5 knots. One of the Dutch guys did curves for many of the boats in KOG and they were pretty instructive. You might want to incorporate that information somehow into the piece.

So if you keep the pulling force constant you are going to get different times but when you vary the pulling force the times may change completely. Many of the hulls that you looked at were designed for much higher forces. Your human powered boats all work around the human engine while sailing and motorized craft have much more power available. In effect your data is good for human level forces. If you increased the pull I would be surprised if your data did not change.

If you want to do a real world comparison, the protocol worked out when we did the oarmasters some decades back would make the most sense. You take, for example, six qajaqs with six paddlers. Relatively short runs and after each run people switch craft. What you will get is a ranking of paddlers and different ranking of craft.

Author’s Response

Thanks for your comments; as always I welcome and appreciate your thoughts. As I have learned from this experi- ence nothing is ever as simple as it appears. You are absolutely correct; there is no guarantee that the most efficient hull design at one speed will be the most efficient hull design at a different speed (towing force). I had intended

7 2 T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org to make multiple runs at different towing forces (.5 ounces, 1 ounce, and 1.5 ounces), but well, those plans never materialized. When I saw that there was only going to be one round, I gave up on the slow speed (.5 ounce towing force) and the high speed (1.5 ounce towing force) and went with the medium speed (1 ounce towing force). The slow speed tests were painful; everything wandered all over the place. The 1.5 ounce towing force tests were a little suspect; everything tracked much straighter, but there was a noticeable change in the pitch of some of the models.

I'm guessing that they were at or near their critical hull speeds (the old climbing the liquid hill). In the end I decided to go with the 8 ounce weight (1 ounce towing force) as it produced a speed that was somewhere near the critical hull speed without exceeding it. My logic was that the only hull that was designed to operate above its critical hull speed was the destroyer; the submarine and the Hooper Island draketail were not powered to exceed their surface hull speeds, so I went with the majority.

In retrospect I was pretty naïve in going into this. I underestimated the complexity of tow tank testing. I underesti- mated the complexity of hull design. I thought I could simplify everything by standardizing on a fixed length, a fixed displacement, and a fixed towing force. On the cheap. Having said that, the results of the tests were repeatable and defensible. If I can come up with a more dependable and accurate method of towing I may do this again, and I'll vary the towing forces and make more runs with fewer models. I'm a little worried that the models are too small to produce meaningful information, so I may drop that idea and do something else. One option is to follow your lead with the six kayaks and the six paddlers idea. It occurred to me that there are lots of different kayaks at Delmarva, so maybe instead of using scaled-down models I'll scale up the towing mechanisms and use full-scale kayaks. Sure be a lot easier than building more models.

I did research the modeling of the different hulls and their predicted behaviors, specifically the speed resistance curves. I only partly understand how the modeling software works, so I’m not going to say much on the subject, other than one of the reasons to build and test physical models in tow tanks is to validate the computerized models.

T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org 7 3 References

Dean, Brian, and Bharat Bhushan. 2010. “Shark-Skin Surfaces for Fluid-Drag Reduction in Turbulent Flow: A Review.”

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A 368: 4775–4806.

Froude, W. 1888. The Resistance of Ships. Bureau of Navigation, Navy Department.

Golden, H. 2006. Kayaks of Greenland. Portland, Oregon: White House Grocery Press.

Taylor, K. “Kayak Hunting in Illorsuit Greenland 1959.” Blog. kayakgreenland1959.wordpress.com

Unger, M. L. 2004. “Creating a Flexible Web Enabled Learning and Research Facility at the MIT Towing Tank.”

Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“William Froude.” Grace’s Guide to British Industrial History. http://www.gracesguide.co.uk/William_Froude.

7 4 T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org INDEXES

The two indexes that follow this introduction are for every article published in The Masik, excluding this issue. The second index lists articles in alphabetical order by author last name. The first index orders the articles by the 13 cat- egories, chosen to reflect the content:

Accessories Rolling Editorial Ropes Greenland Symposiums etc. Interviews and Profiles Technique Kayak Building Testing Qajaq USA News Travel

Reviews

The page numbers shown refer to the compilation of The Masik, which includes every issue but the current one. It should appear on the Qajaq USA website as this issue is published, or shortly after. The compilation and these indexes will be updated to reflect the contents of this issue.

T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org 7 5 Masik articles, indexed by category

Accessories A Steam Box Just for Bending Ribs: Economical But Effective, Bob Kelim, 4 Trees to Paddles: Carving Greenland Paddles from Split Wood, Shawn Baker, 9 Making a Custom Sea Sock: A Second Line of Defense, Jim Belair, 17 Tuiliks: Versatile Garments with Variety, Shawn Baker, 48 Building an Adjustable Rib Bending Jig: An Alternative to Free-Hand Bending, Brian Nystrom, 74 Custom Neoprene Mitts: A Simplified Procedure, Shawn Baker, 80 Making a Unaaq: Making a Greenland-Style Knob Harpoon, Shawn Baker, 98 Making a Chris Cunningham Tuilik: A southern hemisphere interpretation, Pete Notman and Tony Calvert, 103 Do It Yourself: Kayak Rope, Pat Slaven, 231 Putting Together a Skin-on-Frame Repair Kit, Joel Fleisher, 304 Making a Tuilik, Akuilisaq, and Cockpit Cover, Dana Rutherford, 374 Paddle Survey, Roy Martin, 388 Tools for paddle making and kayak building, Dave Niles, 434 Paddle Survey at the Museum Support Facility to the National Museum of Natural History, Suitland, Maryland, 7–9 January 2013, Tom Milani, 555

Editorial Editor’s Corner, Bobby Curtis, 1 Qajaq Talk, Greg Stamer, 1 Editor’s Corner, Bobby Curtis, 15 Qajaq Talk, Greg Stamer, 16 Editor’s Corner, Bobby Curtis, 35 Qajaq Talk, Greg Stamer, 39 Editor’s Corner, Bobby Curtis, 51 Qajaq Talk, Greg Stamer, 55 Editor’s Corner, Bobby Curtis, 67 Qajaq Talk, Greg Stamer, 71 Feedback, various, 84 Editor’s Corner, Bobby Curtis, 85 Qajaq Talk, Greg Stamer, 88

7 6 T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org Editor’s Corner, Bobby Curtis, 101 Qajaq Talk, Greg Stamer, 102 Editor’s Corner, Bobby Curtis, 115 Qajaq Talk, Greg Stamer, 116 Editor’s Corner, Bobby Curtis, 135 Qajaq Talk, Greg Stamer, 136 Editor’s Letter, Tom Milani, 152 Qajaq Talk, Greg Stamer, 153 Editor’s Letter, Tom Milani, 183 Qajaq Talk, Greg Stamer, 184 Editor’s Letter, Tom Milani, 224 President’s Letter: Minority Complex, Greg Stamer, 225 Editor’s Letter, Tom Milani, 269 President’s Letter: Variety — The Spice of Life, Greg Stamer, 270 Editor’s Letter, Tom Milani, 322 President’s Letter, Greg Stamer, 323 Editor’s Letter, Tom Milani, 356 President’s Letter, Greg Stamer, 357 Editor’s Letter, Tom Milani, 397 President’s Message, Ed Zachowski, 398 Editor’s Letter, Tom Milani, 487 Past President’s Letter, Ed Zachowski, 488 President’s Message, Terry O’Malley, 489

Greenland 2003 Greenland National Kayak Championships: A Life-Changing Experience, Mark Molina, 44 Greenland National Championships 2004: The Real Stars Are the Children, Cheri Perry, 86 2004 Greenland Competition: Thoughts and reflections, Dubside, 130 Paartoq 2006, James Song, 182 A Journey in Greenland, Richard Best, 194 Greenland–#4 Places to Find, Tom Sharp, 206 Greenland July 2006, Karl Annar Markussen, 207 Diving In, Alison Sigethy, 214

T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org 7 7 Sisimiut Peat House, Bengt Tydén, 218 Illulissat Explorations, Sandy Noyes, 282 Illorsuit Adventure, Ken Taylor, 296 Preparing for Greenland, Jeanette Rogers, 366 Saqqit: Narrative of an East Greenland Kayak, Sandy Noyes, 452 Report from East Greenland, Sandy Noyes, 491

Interviews and Profiles Mark Starr Interview, Tom Milani, 172 Cindy Cole, Greg Stamer, 250 Brand Family Interview, Tom Milani, 272 An Interview with Helen Wilson, Tom Milani, 327 Helen Wilson interviewing John Pedersen, Helen Wilson, 331 Jo Hamilton Tribute, Rene DuFresne, 346 Dubside Talks with the President of Qaannat Kattuffiat, transcribed by Dubside, 362 Greg Stamer Talks with the President of Qajaq Japan, Dubside, 368 Interview with new Qajaq USA President, Ed Zachowski, Tom Milani, 449 Interview: Greg Stamer, Past President of Qajaq USA, Tom Milani, 471

Kayak Building My Ningeq: West Greenland Skin-on-Frame Kayak, John Petersen, 2 The Boat in My Basement: An Addition to the Fleet, Tony Schmitz, 5 I Fancied I would Love to Return by Boat, or How I Got Into Kayaking, Michael Bradley, 6 Jay Contemplating Life in His SOF, Jay Babina, 25 Richard and His Qajaq, Richard A. Toellner, 25 Mark’s Greenland Kayak, Mark Woodhead, 26 What I learned about Paint, Jennifer Torres, 26 Wayne’s First Greenland Kayak, Wayne Steffens, 27 An Eastern Arctic Kayak: Or My First Attempt to Build a SOF, Duane “Arko” Bronnaugh, 28 Trial and Error: The Evolution of a Folding Kayak, Tom Yost, 31 Number Three, Jennifer Torres, 36 My Iqyaq: An Aleutian Kayak, Aaron Cunningham, 38 Building a Hooper Bay Kayak, Jack Gilman, 40 Finding My Perfect Boat: Your Boat Is out There Too, Joy McNeil, 52

7 8 T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org Building My First Qajaq: Is it Becoming an Obsession?, Jon Marien, 54 “Sea Pup” SOF Kid Kayaks: Building Four Kid Kayaks, with Kids!, Steve Philips, 56 Designing a Stitch-and-Glue Qajariaq: Using Anthropometric Dimensioning, Dave Murphy, 59 Qaannat on Muhheakunnuk: Skin on Frame Kayaks (in Greenlandic) on the River that Flows Both Ways (in Algon quin), Wayne Gilchrest, 64 An East Greenland Kayak: My First Boat Building Experience, Rich Weise, 73 A Qajaq for Cheri: Building a Boat for a Talented Paddler, Mark Starr, 78 My First Stitch and Glue Qajariaq: Based on My SOF, Matt Johnson, 93 My Strip-Built Disco Bay: Building a Kayak for My Wife, Richard Kohlström, 94 Designing Ginnyak: Building a Coastal Explorer, Brian Schulz, 95 Misterie and the Necromancer — Qajaq for father — Qajaq for son, Andrew Elizaga, 117 My First Kayak: I paddle this kayak all the time now, Richard Best, 121 My Highly Rockered Greenland Kayaks: Just perfect for canoe ballet, Bryan Hansel, 123 Building the Sea Spirit: Completely built from scratch, Wes Ostertag, 137 Angatuk: The Shaman, Patrick Teasdale, 139 Maligiaq’s Visit to Washington, D.C.: Building a Beautiful Craft, Tom Milani, 140 Building Tips, Tony Schmitz, 161 Cedar Strip Replica, Don Goss, 167 North Bay Redemption, Brooks Martyn, 175 It’s a Qajaq!, Mike Bielski, 253 An Alaskan Kayak, Bill Samson, 277 2005 Kayak Dusted off for Inspection, Dubside, 292 Skinning without a Needle: Fastening a skin around a kayak or boat frame, using splines — an open-source project?, Robert Morris, 308 It’s a Qajaq! Part II — Materials, Mike Bielski, 335 Where to now, for skin-on-frame kayaks?, Bill Samson, 403 Qajaq Build Story—Part 1, Simon Wall, 410 Molly Ostertag Comics, Molly Ostertag, 515 Deconstructing Greenland Kayaks, Ralph Colwell Young, 517 Deconstructing Greenland Kayaks Part II: The Mighty Keelson, Ralph Colwell Young, 528

Qajaq USA News Qajaq USA Elections are Coming!, various, 81

T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org 7 9 Qajaq USA Public Relations, Terry O’Malley, 429 Qajaq USA Financials, Ben Fuller, 560

Reviews Kayak Design DVD: A review and critique, Pete Strand, 131 Book Review: This Cold Heaven: Seven Seasons in Greenland by Gretel Ehrlich and The Last Gentleman Adventurer: Coming of Age in the Arctic, by Edward Beauclerk Maurice, Tom Milani, 169 Book Review: Greenland Paddles, Step-by-Step by Brian Nystrom, Len Thunberg, 178 The Water Decides: Harvey Golden’s Kayaks of Greenland, Tom Milani, 221 Book Review: Arctic Adventure: My Life in the Frozen North by Peter Freuchen, Tom Milani, 249 Baidarka: The Building of an Aleutian Baidarka, DVD Review by Tom Milani, 480

Rolling Rolling, Rolling, Rolling: Re-awakening My Favorite Pastime, Cheri Perry, 47 “What Was That?” Some Rolls that Aren’t on “The List,” Jonathan Long, 62 Opposite Arm Rolls: Roll up on the right side using only the left arm, Dubside, 112 First Time Rolling: I felt butterflies in my stomach, Hyok Lee, 142 Pond Scum: Hanging (Upside-down) with Boyz in Hoodz, Kate Hartland, 144 Walden Pond: All kinds of kayaks show up at the Pond, Dan Segal, 145 Teaching Rolling — The Human Kayak Method, Helen Wilson, 352

Ropes Rope Gymnastics 101: Allunaariqattaarneq for beginners, Dubside, 125 Qajaarsaarneq: A recap of the year’s rope gymnastic highlights, Dubside, 147 The Face of Champions to Come, Dubside, 203 Getting Started on Ropes, Dubside, 358

Symposiums etc. Origins, Diane Carr, 235 Events Calendar, various , 3 Notes from the Regions, various , 9 Events Calendar, various, 18 SSTIKS 2003, Shawn Baker, 24 Events Calendar, various, 37 Montreal Madness 2003: Wintry Waters of the Port of Montreal, Nicolas Bertrand, 43 Notes from the Regions, various, 50

8 0 T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org Events Calendar, various, 53 Notes from the Regions, various, 66 Events Calendar, various, 69 Notes from the Regions, various, 82 The 17th Annual Delmarva Paddler’s Retreat, 30 September–2 October 2005, Ed Zachowski, 151 Traditional Arctic Kayak Symposium, Marcus Koenen, 227 See One, Do One, Teach One, Dick Silberman, 237 You Just Gotta Believe…, Keith Wikle, 240 Reproduction of my experience in the U.S. I would like to tell you the way I tell it to Greenlanders — real hunting qajaqs in USA!, John Pedersen, 321 The UK Traditional Kayak Meeting 2009, Bill Samson, 349 Experience SSTIKS, Jeanette Rogers, 372 The HRGF Story, Dave Sides, 399 The Way of the Skinny Stick, Eliza Wicks-Arshack, 424 The history of SSTIKS: a personal reflection, Tim Mattson, 474 The Coast, Technology and Character of the Eighth Annual Hudson River Greenland Sea Kayaking Festival, Beau Miles, 542

Technique Dewatering and Self-Rescue in a Skin-on-Frame Boat: Or, Up a Creek without a Pump, Peter Strand, 7 The “Fine Points” of Harpoon Throwing: For Accuracy and Distance, Greg Stamer, Greg Stamer, 89 Your mind is stronger than your body, and it will get you home, Tom Milani and John Pedersen, 333

Testing To Soak or Not to Soak: A Steam Bending Test, Brian Nystrom and Jay Babina, 110 Deconstructing Greenland Kayaks, Ralph Colwell Young, 517 Deconstructing Greenland Kayaks Part II: The Mighty Keelson, Ralph Colwell Young, 528

Travel My Minganie Winter: Exploring the Sea Ice, Valerie Dillon, 68 Greenland Kayaking in Aotearoa: Greenland Kayaks in New Zealand, Tony Calvert, 109 Skinboats of Costa Rica: Based on a true story, Brian Schulz, 132 Yost in Paradise: A Maiden Voyage, Pete Notman, 165 Traveling with Greenland Paddles, Marcel Rodriguez, 245

T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org 8 1 Masik articles, indexed by author

Jay Babina, Jay Contemplating Life in His SOF, 25 Shawn Baker, Trees to Paddles: Carving Greenland Paddles from Split Wood, 9 Shawn Baker, Tuiliks: Versatile Garments with Variety, 48 Shawn Baker, Custom Neoprene Mitts: A Simplified Procedure, 80 Shawn Baker, Making a Unaaq: Making a Greenland-Style Knob Harpoon, 98 Shawn Baker, SSTIKS 2003, 24 Jim Belair, Making a Custom Sea Sock: A Second Line of Defense, 17 Nicolas Bertrand, Montreal Madness 2003: Wintry Waters of the Port of Montreal, 43 Richard Best, A Journey in Greenland, 194 Richard Best, My First Kayak: I paddle this kayak all the time now, 121 Mike Bielski, It’s a Qajaq!, 253 Mike Bielski, It’s a Qajaq! Part II — Materials, 335 Michael Bradley, I Fancied I would Love to Return by Boat, or How I Got Into Kayaking, 6 Duane “Arko” Bronnaugh, An Eastern Arctic Kayak: Or My First Attempt to Build a SOF, 28 Larry Reid Brown, Lightweight Fabric Tests: Or How Do They Stack Up, 21 Tony Calvert, Greenland Kayaking in Aotearoa: Greenland Kayaks in New Zealand, 109 Diane Carr, Origins, 235 Aaron Cunningham, My Iqyaq: An Aleutian Kayak, 38 Bobby Curtis, Editor’s Corner, 1 Bobby Curtis, Editor’s Corner, 15 Bobby Curtis, Editor’s Corner, 35 Bobby Curtis, Editor’s Corner, 67 Bobby Curtis, Editor’s Corner, 85 Bobby Curtis, Editor’s Corner, 101 Bobby Curtis, Editor’s Corner, 115 Bobby Curtis, Editor’s Corner, 135 Bobby Curtis, Editor’s Corner, 51 Valerie Dillon, My Minganie Winter: Exploring the Sea Ice, 68 Dubside, 2004 Greenland Competition: Thoughts and reflections, 130 Dubside, Greg Stamer Talks with the President of Qajaq Japan, 368

8 2 T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org Dubside, 2005 Kayak Dusted off for Inspection, 292 Dubside, Opposite Arm Rolls: Roll up on the right side using only the left arm, 112 Dubside, Rope Gymnastics 101: Allunaariqattaarneq for beginners, 125 Dubside, Qajaarsaarneq: A recap of the year’s rope gymnastic highlights, 147 Dubside, The Face of Champions to Come, 203 Dubside, Getting Started on Ropes, 358 Transcribed by Dubside, Dubside Talks with the President of Qaannat Kattuffiat, 362 Rene DuFresne, Jo Hamilton Tribute, 346 Andrew Elizaga, Misterie and the Necromancer — Qajaq for father – Qajaq for son, 117 Joel Fleisher, Putting Together a Skin-on-Frame Repair Kit, 304 Ben Fuller, Qajaq USA Financials, 560 Wayne Gilchrest, Qaannat on Muhheakunnuk: Skin on Frame Kayaks (in Greenlandic) on the River that Flows Both Ways (in Algonquin), 64 Jack Gilman, Building a Hooper Bay Kayak, 40 Don Goss, Cedar Strip Replica, 167 Bryan Hansel, My Highly Rockered Greenland Kayaks: Just perfect for canoe ballet, 123 Kate Hartland, Pond Scum: Hanging (Upside-down) with Boyz in Hoodz, 144 Matt Johnson, My First Stitch and Glue Qajariaq: Based on My SOF, 93 Bob Kelim, A Steam Box Just for Bending Ribs: Economical But Effective, 4 Marcus Koenen, Traditional Arctic Kayak Symposium, 227 Richard Kohlström, My Strip-Built Disco Bay: Building a Kayak for My Wife, 94 Hyok Lee, First Time Rolling: I felt butterflies in my stomach, 142 Jonathan Long, “What Was That?” Some Rolls that Aren’t on “The List,”, 62 Jon Marien, Building My First Qajaq: Is it Becoming an Obsession?, 54 Karl Annar Markussen, Greenland July 2006, 207 Roy Martin, Paddle Survey, 388 Brooks Martyn, North Bay Redemption, 175 Tim Mattson, The history of SSTIKS: a personal reflection, 474 Joy McNeil, Finding My Perfect Boat: Your Boat Is out There Too, 52 Tom Milani, Baidarka: The Building of an Aleutian Baidarka, 480 Tom Milani, Paddle Survey at the Museum Support Facility to the National Museum of Natural History, Suitland, Maryland, 7–9 January 2013, 555 Tom Milani, Editor’s Letter, 152

T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org 8 3 Tom Milani, Editor’s Letter, 183 Tom Milani, Editor’s Letter, 224 Tom Milani, Editor’s Letter, 269 Tom Milani, Editor’s Letter, 322 Tom Milani, Editor’s Letter, 356 Tom Milani, Editor’s Letter, 397 Tom Milani, Editor’s Letter, 487 Tom Milani, Mark Starr Interview, 172 Tom Milani, Brand Family Interview, 272 Tom Milani, An Interview with Helen Wilson, 327 Tom Milani, Interview with new Qajaq USA President, Ed Zachowski, 449 Tom Milani, Interview: Greg Stamer, Past President of Qajaq USA, 471 Tom Milani, Maligiaq’s Visit to Washington, D.C.: Building a Beautiful Craft, 140 Tom Milani, Book Review: This Cold Heaven: Seven Seasons in Greenland by Gretel Ehrlich and The Last Gentleman Adventurer: Coming of Age in the Arctic, by Edward Beauclerk Maurice, 169 Tom Milani, The Water Decides: Harvey Golden’s Kayaks of Greenland, 221 Tom Milani, Book Review: Arctic Adventure: My Life in the Frozen North, by Peter Freuchen, 249 Tom Milani and John Pedersen, Your mind is stronger than your body, and it will get you home, 333 Beau Miles, The Coast, Technology and Character of the Eighth Annual Hudson River Greenland Sea Kayaking Festival, 542 Mark Molina, 2003 Greenland National Kayak Championships: A Life-Changing Experience, 44 Robert Morris, Skinning without a Needle: Fastening a skin around a kayak or boat frame, using splines — an open-source project?, 308 Dave Murphy, Designing a Stitch-and-Glue Qajariaq: Using Anthropometric Dimensioning, 59 Dave Niles, Tools for paddle making and kayak building, 434 Pete Notman, Yost in Paradise: A Maiden Voyage, 165 Pete Notman and Tony Calvert, Making a Chris Cunningham Tuilik: A southern hemisphere interpretation, 103 Sandy Noyes, Illulissat Explorations, 282 Sandy Noyes, Saqqit: Narrative of an East Greenland Kayak, 452 Sandy Noyes, Report from East Greenland, 491 Brian Nystrom, Building an Adjustable Rib Bending Jig: An Alternative to Free-Hand Bending, 74 Brian Nystrom and Jay Babina, To Soak or Not to Soak: A Steam Bending Test, 110 Terry O’Malley, President’s Message, 489

8 4 T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org Terry O’Malley, Qajaq USA Public Relations, 429 Molly Ostertag, Molly Ostertag Comics, 515 Wes Ostertag, Building the Sea Spirit: Completely built from scratch, 137 John Pedersen, Reproduction of my experience in the U.S. I would like to tell you the way I tell it to Greenlanders — real hunting qajaqs in USA!, 321 John Petersen, My Ningeq: West Greenland Skin-on-Frame Kayak, 2 Cheri Perry, Greenland National Championships 2004: The Real Stars Are the Children, 86 Cheri Perry, Rolling, Rolling, Rolling: Re-awakening My Favorite Pastime, 47 Steve Philips, “Sea Pup” SOF Kid Kayaks: Building Four Kid Kayaks, with Kids!, 56 Marcel Rodriguez, Traveling with Greenland Paddles, 245 Jeanette Rogers, Preparing for Greenland, 366 Jeanette Rogers, Experience SSTIKS, 372 Dana Rutherford, Making a Tuilik, Akuilisaq, and Cockpit Cover, 374 Bill Samson, An Alaskan Kayak, 277 Bill Samson, Where to now, for skin-on-frame kayaks?, 403 Bill Samson, The UK Traditional Kayak Meeting 2009, 349 Tony Schmitz, The Boat in My Basement: An Addition to the Fleet, 5 Tony Schmitz, Building Tips, 161 Brian Schulz, Designing Ginnyak: Building a Coastal Explorer, 95 Brian Schulz, Skinboats of Costa Rica: Based on a true story, 132 Dan Segal, Walden Pond: All kinds of kayaks show up at the Pond, 145 Tom Sharp, Greenland–#4 Places to Find, 206 Dick Silberman, See One, Do One, Teach One, 237 Dave Sides, The HRGF Story, 399 Alison Sigethy, Diving In, 214 Pat Slaven, Do It Yourself: Kayak Rope, 231 James Song, Paartoq 2006, 182 Greg Stamer, Qajaq Talk, 1 Greg Stamer, Qajaq Talk, 16 Greg Stamer, Qajaq Talk, 39 Greg Stamer, Qajaq Talk, 55 Greg Stamer, Qajaq Talk, 71 Greg Stamer, Qajaq Talk, 88

T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org 8 5 Greg Stamer, Qajaq Talk, 102 Greg Stamer, Qajaq Talk, 116 Greg Stamer, Qajaq Talk, 136 Greg Stamer, Qajaq Talk, 153 Greg Stamer, Qajaq Talk, 184 Greg Stamer, President’s Letter: Minority Complex, 225 Greg Stamer, President’s Letter: Variety — The Spice of Life, 270 Greg Stamer, President’s Letter, 323 Greg Stamer, President’s Letter, 357 Greg Stamer, Cindy Cole, 250 Greg Stamer, The “Fine Points” of Harpoon Throwing: For Accuracy and Distance, Greg Stamer, 89 Mark Starr, A Qajaq for Cheri: Building a Boat for a Talented Paddler, 78 Wayne Steffens, Wayne’s First Greenland Kayak, 27 Pete Strand, Kayak Design DVD: A review and critique, 131 Peter Strand, Dewatering and Self-Rescue in a Skin-on-Frame Boat: Or, Up a Creek without a Pump, 7 Ken Taylor, Illorsuit Adventure, 296 Patrick Teasdale, Angatuk: The Shaman, 139 Len Thunberg, Book Review: Greenland Paddles, Step-by-Step by Brian Nystrom, 178 Richard A. Toellner, Richard and His Qajaq, 25 Jennifer Torres, What I learned about Paint, 26 Jennifer Torres, Number Three, 36 Bengt Tydén, Sisimiut Peat House, 218 Simon Wall, Qajaq Build Story—Part 1, 410 Rich Weise, An East Greenland Kayak: My First Boat Building Experience, 73 Keith Wikle, You Just Gotta Believe…, 240 Mark Woodhead, Mark’s Greenland Kayak, 26 Eliza Wicks-Arshack, The Way of the Skinny Stick, 424 Helen Wilson, Helen Wilson interviewing John Pedersen, 331 Helen Wilson, Teaching Rolling — The Human Kayak Method, 352 Tom Yost, Trial and Error: The Evolution of a Folding Kayak, 31 Ralph Colwell Young, Deconstructing Greenland Kayaks, 517 Ralph Colwell Young, Deconstructing Greenland Kayaks Part II: The Mighty Keelson, 528 Ed Zachowski, President’s Message, 398

8 6 T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org Ed Zachowski, Past President’s Letter, 488 QAJAQ USA PATRONS Ed Zachowski, The 17th Annual Delmarva Paddler’s Retreat, 30 September–2 October Henry Davies 2005, 151 Au Train, MI various, Feedback, 84 Federic J. Feingold Lee, MA various, Qajaq USA Elections are Coming!, 81 Ben Fuller Cushing, ME various, Events Calendar, 18 Veit Klee various, Events Calendar, 37 Portland, OR

various, Notes from the Regions, 50 Michael H. Morris Eureka, CA various, Events Calendar, 53 Richard Nonas various, Notes from the Regions, 66 New York City, NY Ken Taylor various, Events Calendar, 69 Louisa, VA various, Notes from the Regions, 82 QAJAQ USA various , Events Calendar, 3 LIFETIME MEMBERS various , Notes from the Regions, 9 Todd Angerhofer Portland, ME

Keith Attenborough Newburyport, MA

Jeffrey Bjorgo Maple Grove, MN

Christopher Crowhurst Savage, MN

Brian Lynch & Rebecca Handenberger Doylestown, PA

Leslie Hewett Charleston, SC

Rita Romeu Allentown, NJ

Gabriel Romeu Allentown, NJ

Greg Stamer Altamonte Springs, FL

James Tibensky Wayne, IL

Jeffrey A. Wilde Ithaca, NY

T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org 8 7 QAJAQ USA 2015 Board Members and Advisors:

Sue Byerly Terrance O'Malley Board Advisor, Board Member, President Merchandise Fulfillment Cranbury, NJ Chestertown, MD [email protected] [email protected] Wes Ostertag Tracy Coon Board Advisor, Board Advisor, Facebook Milan, NY Admin [email protected] Brick, NJ ACKNOWLEDGMENTS [email protected] John Pedersen Board Advisor, Christopher Crowhurst Greenland Liaison, Board Advisor Ilulissat, Greenland Thanks to Art Director Helen Wilson, who once again put together a fine Savage, MN [email protected] Fred Randall issue, this time while residing on several continents, battling injuries, and Board Advisor, John Doornink Georgetown, ME Board Member, [email protected] being as busy as anyone running her own business can be. I’m grateful PNW Representative, Poulsbo, WA Dan Segal to Helen’s good nature and unflappability; working with her has been a [email protected] Board Member, Acton, MA Vernon Doucette [email protected] pleasure. Board Advisor, Archivist, Journal Editor Jean-Dominique Sellier Cambridge, MA Board Member, [email protected] Toronto, Ontario, Canada, I am also grateful to the authors for their contributions to this issue. I’d [email protected] Renee DuFresne Board Advisor, Greg Stamer also like to acknowledge the reviewers of Ralph Young’s technical articles: Membership Coordinator Board Member, Deerwood, MN Past-President, Webmaster, Ben Fuller, Harvey Golden, David Heath, Nick Schade, Len Thunberg, and [email protected] Forum Admin Altamonte Springs, FL Anders Thygesen. Ben Fuller [email protected] Board Member, Treasurer Cushing, ME Nancy Thornton [email protected] Board Advisor, Kingsley, MI Harvey Golden [email protected] Board Advisor, Portand, OR Helen Tozer-Wilson [email protected] Board Member, Facebook Admin Rosanna Lovecchio Arcata, CA Board Advisor, [email protected] Blairstown, NJ [email protected] Edward J. Zachowski Board Member, Tom Milani Past President Board Member, Brielle, NJ MASIK editor, [email protected] Alexandria, VA [email protected]

Richard Nonas Board Advisor, New York City, NY [email protected]

8 8 T h e M a s i k | Summer 2015 | www.qajaqusa.org