[Paddlewise] Greenland Paddles Revisited

Well, I'm back from the Great Lakes Sea Kayak Symposium.
The weather was great, and as usual Linda and I had a great
time.

Three paddle makers had "Greenland" paddles on display.
All were different. It seems like everyone is trying to improve
on the original design while still calling it a Greenland paddle.
One made the loom and blades separately and joined them
together, but the result at the root of the blade was, well,
disjointed to the touch and not at all comfortable to hold. I
also disliked the glossy varnish on the paddles. Another
carved his paddles from single pieces of wood. The paddles
had a very attractive oiled finish and were quite nice to the
touch, but for some reason the maker chose to weaken the
paddles by making the looms thinner at the ends than in the
center. The bulbous centers of the looms would have made it
awkward to slide the hands back and forth. Also, the ends
were cut straight instead of being rounded. Mark Rogers'
paddles were nicely made, apparently from single pieces of
wood, though the tags said they were laminated, and Linda
said they balanced well and were easy to paddle with. But I
found them heavy (which may be authentic), they lacked
shoulders, and the tips were beveled instead of rounded.

On Friday I tried my new Greenland paddle for the first time.
I had made it as close as possible to the native design, even
to the extent of pegging "bone" tips made of white UHMW
polyethylene onto the ends. As in the native originals that
served as a model, the tips are wider than the blades. Though
I think the main purpose of the wide tip is to serve as a stop
for the hand when sliding it out for an extended grip, it felt like
the wide tip also helped to tilt the leading edge of the blade
forward as it entered the water, causing some forward lift in
the first part of the stroke. (Later, James Loveridge remarked
to me that he always emphasizes this tilt when teaching the
Greenland forward stroke.)

When I arrived home, I found the copy of Chapman's
_Northern Lights_ that I had ordered in my mailbox. This is
the official account of the first British Arctic Air Route
Expedition to Greenland in 1930-31, led by 23-year-old Gino
Watkins. I turned first to the chapter on kayaking. Seven of
the eleven members of the expedition who had kayaks made
for them learned to roll, but only Watkins learned to roll using
a throwing stick or his hands alone. (Chapman learned a hand
roll on the second expedition.)

There is a four-part plate showing one of the expedition
members rolling, but the style of roll is not clear. In the setup,
instead of the paddle being placed parallel to the gunwale, it is
angled down, so that the tip is a couple of feet below the kayak,
and this position is maintained as the kayak goes over. The
third part of the plate shows the kayak upside down with the
paddle slightly above the water at about a 30-degree angle from
the bow. The top of the blade is angled *toward* the bow, so it
is not set up for a sweep roll, but it is approximately correct for
a vertical storm roll. The last part shows the conclusion of the
roll. Though the paddler is leaning over the paddle, a stream of
water behind him shows that he had leaned back during the roll.

Chapman's verbal description of a roll would indicate that he
used a sweep roll, but during the first expedition none of the
members who rolled was sophisticated enough to describe well
how they did it, or why they succeeded or failed. In an account
by Chapman of one of his failures to roll, he describes giving up
after three attempts, letting go his paddle, and waving his hands
for assistance. I found this account interesting because last
year Derek Hutchinson told us that *he* invented the technique
of waving the hands on both sides of the kayak for an Eskimo
rescue. Maybe it was a reinvention.

BTW, Chapman says that only about one out of four
Angmagssalik Inuit hunters could roll. He attributes this to the
same kind of fatalism that kept many of them from laying up
stores for the winter.

The paddles used by the expedition members appear to be the
type that had bone or ivory edges and wide tips on a flared,
shoulderless, wood core. (It is the bone edges that form the
shoulders.)

Chuck Holst





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