Having visited the traditional kayak museum in Portland Oregon, the old world variations are just as diverse as today's "kayaks". I'd say the most universal attributes would be:
-small narrow displacement mono-hull
-propelled by a double bladed paddle
-paddler(s) seated toward the middle
-craft is typically decked and can "enclose" the paddler about the waist line for water tightness
So basically a plastic Hobbie SOT foot pedal boat barely qualifies, whereas my pygmy arctic tern with hard chines and cedar GP paddle is as close to traditional without going the skin on frame route...
ICF definition In whitewater slalom, if you sit on your knees and use a single blade, you are paddling a canoe. If you sit with your legs in front of you and use a double bladed paddle, you are paddling a kayak. Both are boats, vessels that are used on water.
(in Greenland, a kayak is a qajaq, not a boat, but we are not in Greenland)
Why would that be? Spray covers have been added to canoes for quite some time. And, we have decked canoes, of which I have owned several. Of course, people call them kayaks, but they’re wrong.
As with most things Not always easy to write a complete definition, but pretty easy to identify most of the time – at least when you see it paddled. The same hull can often be converted from kayak to a C-1.
Then one dat you see a squirt boat diving in an eddy line and you ask yourself is that even a boat?".
Really full of yourself Aren’t you. Just another yank who thinks he knows more about the UK than someone who lives here. (There are plenty on the B&B board just like you)
Of course the distinctions are known amongst those who are involved in the sport but as far as the general public are concerned the generic term is “CANOE”.
Many of the dealers selling paddling equipment use the main term Canoes with kayaks as a sub heading.
My take When helping people getting into paddling,I tell them anything you sit on the bottom of and paddle with a dubble paddle is for practical purposes a kayak. If you shut your eyes they all feel similar.A canoe is a boat you can sit or high kneel in and use a single blade. Bet I’ll get some purest objections to this,notice I said"for practical purposes".
I have converted a c-1 to a kayak, and what made it a kayak was that I could only paddle it sitting on the bottom of the hull, using a double bladed paddle.
When a kayak is converted to c-1, it can only be paddled kneeling with a single blade.
That seems to suggest the key distinction. But we can all keep a gentle grip on our cluster concepts.
This was a pointless thread that should have been on the Discussion Forum, or on the pile of fuzzy thinking.