Re: [Paddlewise] Innovations in sea kayak designs

I worked as a teacher for 30 years or so.  And, every year at the fall "in 
service" we were treated to dissertations on innovative ways of 
accomplishing our task ... but about 90% of the time those new techniques 
were never evaluated for their efficacy.  To wit, there were _no_ follow-up 
studies to establish that the innovative techniques helped students develop 
skills or understanding any better than what we had been doing for years 
... techniques and methods which _had_ been tested, which were based on 
sound understanding of cognitive development in adults and younger folks, 
and how pleasure/reward motivates people.

So, when someone berates a community of developers of kayak designs for 
failing to be "innovative," my skin crawls.

In fact, a person like Craig might berate the Broze Bros. because they 
failed to "innovate" after developing and successfully marketing there 
epoch-making designs of ... when? ... the eighties?  the nineties?  When I 
visited their shop in 1993, they had essentially the same hulls on the 
racks they were selling in 2005.

There is a reason for the success of the Broze hulls:  they are based on an 
understanding of the physics and hydrodynamics of water, in particular, how 
changing the part of a hull engaged in the pressure distribution a paddler 
puts in the water makes the hull "carve," much in the same way a ski with 
side cut carves a parallel turn.  [If you ask Matt about this, he will 
freely tell you they applied ideas learned in designing skis to kayaks.]

So why would the Broze Bros. change their hulls?  To be innovative?  No. 
So they would __work__.  Engineers know that if a design meets its goals, 
and tinkering with it only degrades its performance, you should not mess 
with it!  If the goals change, _then_ the design might change.

Which leads me to the second reason sea kayak hull design innovation (the 
real kind, not the marketing kind) has plateaued:  paddlers are not doing 
radically new things with their hulls.  Most want a compromise boat that 
can carry a load, carve turns, roll layback fashion, pass through the water 
with a modicum of effort, and be easy on the pocketbook.  As we all 
realize, some of these design goals are in conflict with each other.  About 
the only thing to change in hulls the last several years is reduction in 
the height of the back deck because folks favor layback rolls nowadays.  In 
fact, many "older" designs have been modified to handle laybacks, by 
cutting the back deck down.

In contrast, the WW crowd _did_ change what it wanted to do with its hulls, 
and there _was_ true innovation in hull design:  playboats came into favor 
over trippers.  Someone who spends an hour or two exploring what he/she can 
do on one wave at river mile 17 does not want to haul around a lot of 
useless hull; planing and edging become paramount; volume and stability do 
not.  In brief, because there was a sizeable element of the WW fraternity 
which _changed_its_paddling_requirements_, hull form changed.  No similar 
change in paddling practice has occurred in sea kayaking.

Finally, a breakthrough in the basic understanding of the craft can also 
generate true innovation:  if someone develops a better understanding of 
hydrodynamics, then we may see some true design changes in sea kayaks, in 
the same way winglets appeared on airliners to increase wing efficiency. 
To date, nothing parallel has occurred in the science of pushing a hull 
through water.

-- 
Dave Kruger
Astoria, OR
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