Peter wrote: > To keep the flying blood and body parts from falling into the kayak they > devised a seal skin skirt or cover the cockpit. The term "spray skirt" > was > not referring to water spray, but the blood that would spray when a major > artery was severed. It was considered bad luck to discover after a > successful contest to find your competitor's body parts and blood inside > your kayak. I wonder if this is the reason why the Aleutians used red paint on their kayak frames and their paddles. After a fight, you probably couldn't tell if that red color was fresh blood or old paint. Nice way of avoiding post-kayak-fight traumatic stress disorder (or somewhat in that direction). I better put a *big* ;-) here ... ;-))) Thanks for your report on the true evolution of kayaks and paddles, Peter. Marian Marian Gunkel, Berlin, Germany www.mariangunkel.de *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Fri Jun 08 2001 - 02:06:34 PDT
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