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From: 735769 <735769_at_ican.net> subject: [Paddlewise] Bows Date: Fri, 30 Jul 1999 08:42:04 -0400 · This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0 : Thu Aug 21 2025 - 16:33:01 PDT

Hardly a day passes that I am not accosted by a voluptuous young thing
dressed in a spray skirt and wet suit zipped down to her navel asking,
"Professor, is the long versus short bow thing just a  tempest in a Nalgene
bottle
created by anally retentive designers to bolster sales and justify their
personal design prejudices or does it have it
roots in the distant misty past of Inuit boat building?"

How perceptive young people are today.

Unlike their parents who will follow the nearest boat design guru to the end
of the pier they want to know the pure unvarnished truth even if it doesn't
shine or come in trendy colours.

I confess that for many years I believed only in the totemic significance of
of Inuit and Aleut bows but my excavations of pingos and
deciphering of Inuit wall paintings reveal a more complex origin to the bow
debate than designers and anthropologists  today have
recognized. These things do not spring from the ether full blown. Is it a
coincidence that the if one divides the distance between Trafalgar Square
and Anglesey by the length of Inuit kayak builder's arm plus one hand span
that the result exactly equals the length of overhang on an Inuit kayak if
it were the same length as the builder's arm plus one hand span?

Coincidence? I think not.

Consider this. The number of sides of a pyramid are four, exactly the number
of surfaces on a Greenland kayak hull and that all pyramids face in the same
direction just as all Greenland kayaks turn into the wind. Is it any wonder
then that Aleut kayaks turn way from the wind? What causes these boats to
turn away from or into the wind? Certainly not tiny little Egyptian slaves
who were clearly two dimensional (as one can see from pyramid hieroglyphics
and could not face more than two directions. As well suited as the Egyptians
were for living along the Nile that only had upstream and downstream
directions, they would never have cut it at the north pole where there is
only one direction no matter which direction one faces.

It is a great tragedy that the Inuit never progressed beyond simply Pingo
paintings and never learned to write or print supermarket flyers. I They
they could have repelled the European invasion by printing counterfeit Euro
dollars with pictures of the Queen to impress the Brits.  Even today
Colombian drug dealers, the descendents of early Inuit explorers not wasting
their Seed, keep all their business records in their heads. They would even
frown upon Thoreau's minimalist bookkeeping.

But I digress.

The question of the moment is "How did the Inuit develop their bows?" They
had no Playboy centerfolds to guide them nor had Madonna arrived with her
pointy brassieres. Would they even have gone paddling had Madonna been
handy? Clearly the origin lies in the great exploratory voyages of the
Inuit.

Historians have painted a stirring picture of the Greeks butting bows with
the Persians at Salamis. No doubt Inuit who caught the red eye and were
flying overhead in their crotch
dirigibles, saw the fight and marveled at the ram bow's effectiveness.
Hastily sketching the bow on his underwear. The intrepid explorer would then
return to jeering neighbors who probably could not believe anyone would play
nautical bumper cars with their kayaks. The Wiser Heads argued forcefully
that the drawing was upside down and installed the ram above the water
rather
than below. This
fortuitous error made Inuit kayaks better for sliding up on ice floes, sand
beaches and over capsized rivals trying to reach the same seal.

More imaginative designers cleverly sewed their boats in such a way that, by
sealing off the cockpit tightly they could inflate the ends into skin sonar
domes that would support the added weight of the long bows and reduce
pitching moments. It is estimated that an Inuit after a heavy meal of
caribou paunch could develop more than 1.25 KDH of gas. (A KDH or Kayak
Designer Hour, is the amount of hot gas produced by one kayak designer
justifying his design philosophy in one hour). The sonar bulb bow never
caught on as impacts with ice could burst the stretched membrane forcing the
paddler to take an early subway.

We can never know what would have happened had they gotten it right for
thusly armed with ram kayaks they could have invaded the west, enslaved the
Aleuts and thus upset the Arctic balance of power.   No need to divide and
conquer as the Aleut were already
divided by bow and distance. We can easily imagine the Aleuts laughing
uproariously at the ram kayaks only to be tragically surprised.

As it happened, getting it wrong destroyed Inuit dreams of world domination.
Attempts to navigate up North American rivers met with failure as the long
Inuit kayaks got wedged in the winding streams of the headwaters and Indians
would pick them off as they bent over their boats unloading little packets
of drugs and drug paraphernalia at portages. Cleverly misplaced portage
signs
would lead the hapless Inuit into dead end trails from which they could not
turn the long boats around and the Indians would attack. With their heads
inside the cockpit the Inuit were helpless. The Inuit fought valiantly and
even attempted to learn the "J" stroke but it was too late. Winter had
arrived and they were forced to straggle home a sad defeated nation.

The only remaining examples of the proper use of the ram bow in the western
hemisphere is the Kutinai Indian canoe. The Kutinai, lacking a web site,
never promoted their design properly and the idea has faded into obscurity.

Pingo paintings clearly show the eastern arctic kayaks with their
long overhanging bows riding up and over their enemies only to be stabbed
from behind by the attackee. Pahh! you say. Do a few pingo paintings prove
that Inuit ship designers invented the inverted ram bow? My twelve year old
niece has pictures of The Spice Girls  plastered all over her bedroom but
does that mean she is a lesbian?  Maybe not directly but these things are
suggestive. If you were to watch your niece carefully through a small hole
you have drilled in the wall for scientific purposes you might be surprised
at what you will learn.

Sincerely,
Dr. Peregrine Inverbon, Ph.d., DD, LL.d, Ph.G
Transcribed by Dr. Inverbon's humble servant John Winters

.

Cheers,
John Winters
Redwing Designs
Web site address, http://home.ican.net/~735769

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