If Noah had been a playboater... by Paul Mason photos by Rob Faubert
An Upper Gatineau Festival goer taking on Cedar Rapids in his Dagger Impulse.
F
orty days and forty nights without having to shuttle would have been swweeet. Instead,
Noah pretty much set the design standard for dis- placement hull boats. Good or Bad? It all depends on your perspective.
I’ve spent the last few years convinced
and trying to convince everyone else that short, planing hull whitewater canoes are
best.Period.Well,maybe I’m getting soft but there may actually indeed be merit to those honking big, twelve foot solo boats. The objective of a planing hull is to surf on top of the water rather than in it. The faster the wave the less displacement there will be and therefore the looser the boat will feel. Small planing hull canoes such as the Dagger Aftershock or Pyrahna Spanish Fly have very flat
bottoms.There is no rock- er in this flat section. Instead, near the ends of the boat, the hull breaks away abruptly, slanting up to meet the deck at the end of the
canoe.This allows the boat to slide to a sideways position on a wave rather than carve across it. The bottom of the hull is
44
www.rapidmag.com
actually concave at the sides making a very sharp
chine.This is referred to as a release
edge.It makes the hull feel loose when side- ways on a wave. The goal of a displacement hull canoe like the Dagger Phantom, Ocoee and every other open canoe out there is completely different. Some canoes such as the Esquif Detonator have flat bottoms but also have rocker, so are still displacement hulls.A dis- placement hull tracks well, meaning it is resistant to
turning.These boats cut through the water making them fast but they must carve their turns to some
degree.This ten- dency to travel in a straight line will be affected by rocker,length and
chine.Rocker increases a boat’s turning ability as does a shorter length and harder chines.
S
ince the big flood, canoes have been fairly multipurpose. Sure, some are
better at one facet of canoeing than anoth- er, but at least each canoe design had the possibility to perform all the manoeuvres that were known as canoeing. As canoe designs changed it was reasonable to expect that they were generally improving, becoming more manouvreable and lighter. Eventually, planing hull technology was incorporated into an open canoe. This would have happened a lot sooner if Noah had built a flat bottom scow instead of a dis- placement boat. Suddenly, a whole host of new techniques and manoeuvres were achievable in a canoe. Unless you had to move a whole lot of animals, why would anyone want to paddle something that resembled the ark? Well there are a couple of reasons. Big
boats track well, have good hull speed and are really good at punching holes. If you watch one plowing through a hole you can see the stern of the boat sinking into the green water of the downstream current as the bow pierces the
hole.This downstream
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66