Baidarkas

For some time I have wanted to build a baidarka, an Aleut hunting 'kayak', but I lack the money and space to do so. I also wish to take up kyudo, but that's another story. Baidarkas (the word is Russian) are, for me, the most refined expression of the small boat form that we know as kayaks, and George Dyson's baidarkas are the most refined of all. Remember that all kayaks were sea going craft, the crews of which could not swim. Hunting seals and small whales in a vessel twenty feet long by eighteen inches beam by six inches draft, with no buoyancy aid, no EPIRB beacon and no chance of rescue, requires balls in any language.

Looking at the frames of an unskinned baidarka should enable one to understand just why our North Sea traversing ancestors worshiped ships so much that they built unseaworthy examples as funerary vehicles for the interment or cremation of their noble dead. A ship, or boat, is, or was until the age of arc welding, a thing of beauty in its own right, whether useful or not, and should be appreciated as such.