The discussion on the beam of folding kayak is interesting. I have tinkered with some folding kayak designs just to see how the design of such boats was limited by the structure. My feeling is that the limitations in shape aren't significant. Many of the "features" of hard shell kayaks are not really advantages at all even if they do make great advertising. When I played around with models I did get the feeling that the narrower folding models might be less rigid than wider boats just because the framework can be more greatly stressed. Ralph will have a better feel for that in real life but maybe that is a contributing factor. As far as weathercocking etc. there is no reason that I can think of why a folding boat need be any better or worse than a hard-shell. It's all in the design not the structure I think. It is too bad that we don't have a good comparison between two identically shaped boats to see if the differences that we sometimes attribute to the two are really true. Unfortunately none of our mathematical methods can cope with flexible frames and skins so all we can do is analyze the shape. Cheers John Winters Redwing Designs Specialists in Human Powered Watercraft http://home.ican.net/~735769/ *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net ***************************************************************************Received on Thu Jan 29 1998 - 03:27:49 PST
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