> I have a hunch that some of the attributes of skin on frame design are the
> result of cumulative lucky coincidences more than rigorous design.

Paul,

Native peoples are often credited with good, common sense and very keen powers of observation. Combine this with many, many hours in the seat of a kayak and a culture in which your hunting and kayaking skills determines your status and you have all the necessary elements to tweak a kayak design to perfection.

When Maligiaq Padilla, the 17 year old Greenland champion was visiting the U.S., he built a new boat just for rolling demonstrations. When we were discussing this boat he noted that he made it with a narrower width, extremely low volume, a shorter overall-length and with more rise to the ends, to make rolling easier. He was not 100% happy with the finished product. He felt that he had introduced too much of a "deep-vee" shape to the hull that retarded rolling (my words) and that his next rolling boat would have a flatter hull section. Although Maligiaq does not have a college education he certainly has a good grasp of cause and effect in kayaks that comes from many hours of paddling, building many boats of his own and critically reviewing other boats that he has paddled in Greenland.

If you feel that perhaps Maligiaq has been "corrupted" by Western scientific method, then obtain a copy of H.C. Petersen's "Skinboats of Greenland" and you will quickly realize that there were (and still are) many design variations to suit different needs (hunting, storm conditions, speed paddling, etc.).

Whether or not you believe these design changes to be "lucky coincidences" is your call. My own belief is that the designs have evolved over many centuries and reflects the result of tradition, thought-out design improvements and experiments, many fatalities, many successes and some accidental surprises by sheer luck. You can place modern science on as high a pedestal as you wish but no matter how "rigorous" a design, no matter how prestigous your engineering degree, no matter how sophisticated you CAD software is, you still need to get the boat wet and make intuitive judgements based on how it actually performs. And of course, there are still modern designers who prefer to create kayaks based on intuition and by using lines that please the eye, and then run the numbers afterword.

From what I have seen the modern Greenlanders have a very good grasp of cause and effect and are not afraid to experiment in search of better performance. I would bet that the native kayakers of 500 years ago and more, were no different.

Greg Stamer