Chuck Sutherland wrote: >>>>>...Long keel lines and hard to control, heavy, beamy East arctic boats and the requirement that they not ever capsize are reason enough for me for their long paddles. Southwest Greenland boats were really much more like slalom boatsNarrow, lots of rocker, so much so that to give them some tracking ability they had to attach a fin (skeg) on the boats, either inside or outside the skin, to augment their tracking ability. Such boats, as discussed for WW boats, require shorter paddles. That in turn, requires the ability to roll. These are a package deal, I believe. How do you account for the long paddles (that included several radically different construction styles) of the Eastern Arctic?<<<<<< [Below is (with minimal editing in brackets) most of my response to Chuck's back channel post (now posted on Paddlewise--above). We were trying to determine If Cam and I had sold him a 9' paddle, as we had both remembered, or not, thus the new subject (as we assumed it was likely a Lightning paddle which had been our best seller). I think this post also addresses Craig's similar thinking on the reason for long East Greenland native paddles.] Let me sleep on your question. It does seem strange that cultural evolution would favor the inferior paddle doesn't it (so that is a good argument). So far all I've come up with in a few minutes, is [the dogma theory] that some great hunter and paddling guru proclaimed it was the right way to go, maybe he found it helped him to keep a heavy load of game piled up on the back deck stabilized, maybe just local custom or fad, maybe it came to be considered more macho to use a longer paddle and they just kept getting longer and longer trying to stay ahead of Nanook in the paddle length wars (you know, a guy thing--taking that back to the evolution argument--why do deer, elk, and moose, have such big antlers?) or, more probably, the natives might be able to take much slower and slightly lower strokes with it to better slowly sneak up on game undetected. Once when I was in Sun Valley in the 70's someone had written "short skis=short unit" on a lift tower and someone else had written below that: "If I get longer skis, will it grow?" I'm starting to like the macho, "my paddle is longer than yours" reasoning better and better. Is there some reason you want this discussion back channel? I'm itching to put my macho explanation for long Greenland paddles out there on Paddlewise. I realize I could seem to be implying that that is why you use a long paddle though and that might be considered name calling but that is certainly not my intention. The antler example does fly in the face of evolution always going to better the survival for the animal or the species so argues instead for the newer "selfish gene" theory over the now discarded "betterment of the species" theories of evolution. [repositioned: "One minor advantage of a really long kayak paddle, you could paddle a stand up paddle board with the same paddle as you kayak with".] *************************************************************************** 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/ ***************************************************************************
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