Baidarka

Craigslist can be a good or bad thing... Whilst perusing the site one day under the heading of kayaks, I came across a George Dyson style of baidarka for sale at $400. I couldn't resist calling the owner, went to his home, talked him down a bit in price and picked it up. Never mind that I already have two other skin-on-frame kayaks and not much room for storage.

For those unfamiliar with George Dyson, he is the man largely responsible for re-introducing the baidarka (a traditional skin-on-frame kayak from the Aleutian islands of Alaska) with an excellent book published over twenty years ago. It's part history of the boat, its design and use as well as the author's own recreations of them, using aluminum tubes and plates instead of wood. Skin-on-frame kayaks have become increasingly popular since then. Many of them are the Greenland style, from which the modern conventional kayak is modeled on.

The word 'baidarka' by the way is Russian for small boat. They were the first Europeans to explore and exploit the Aleutian islands and they basically enslaved the local indigenous people to hunt sea otters for their pelts. This they did with their kayaks. The Russians made them build many more, some of them modified to have three people in each boat. The distinctive feature of this kayak is its bifurcated bow, which is there for a combination of design, performance and aesthetic reasons. Most baidarkas have the lower jaw curl upwards past the upper jaw. This one is the version as drawn by the explorer James Shields in 1798, wherein it looks more like a sharks mouth.

click to enlarge

This particular kayak was built from one of Dyson's kits many years ago. The owner said his friend had built it and gave it to him. I doubted he used it much himself. When I got it on the water, not only was it extremely tippy, but the cockpit was way too high almost reaching under the armpits. The low stability I could deal with, but I could not see myself paddling more than 10 minutes as my arms got tired. I was somewhat disappointed and thought about selling it, once again on Craigslist, however, after talking to a few kayak builder friends, it did seem possible to modify the boat to what it most likely should have been in the first place. I decided to keep it.

I cut off the old gray hypalon skin, sawed off the deck stringer and removed the cockpit. A new 'masik' (forward deck beam) and back deck beam made of wood were added. Bringing the back deck parallel to the gunnels and lowering the forward deck beams brought the height down to a more logical profile.

Most skin-on-frame kayaks have their frames made of wood which, in my opinion, is not only lighter and easier to work with but smells good and has a more organic feel. I must admit though, this kayak did look pretty cool with the skin off and I received quite a few questions and a lot of looks while I was driving it to and from my friend's workshop.

The next step was to sew on a new skin of nylon, stitch in a wooden cockpit rim and poly-urethane it which I did at Corey Freeman's baidarka school down in Anacortes, Washington. My friend Mara was there finishing up her own boat that she had spent a week learning how to build.

Although nothing to do with Aleutians,  I drew a traditional Ainu design simply because I like it. 

Back in Vancouver, I was almost worried that I would not be able to get in as the beam of the kayak is only 19 inches and I shortened the length of the cockpit considerably. My calculations were correct though and once in the kayak, the newly baptized "rocket" was extremely fast and much more comfortable to paddle.