What is a kayak?

BCU

– Last Updated: Nov-16-13 2:36 PM EST –

Covers both kayaks & canoes. Most shops trade under the term "canoe"

Need I go on ?

president falls off…
that would be called a reason to celebrate

Irrelevant. We all know that most in
the UK were deluded about the kayak and canoe distinction, way back when the BCU lurched toward Bethlehem.



There are now many paddling canoes in the UK, and calling them canoes. Maybe, like Cary Grant, you’ve been away in the tropics too long? In the sun?

Is it winter time already?
Sounds like it and we in for it if this type of question is appearing already.

And to answer the original question. Yes, you are nitpicking. Just get in the boat and “paddle on”, as Frank would say. :slight_smile:

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?". :slight_smile:

Except in UK where kayak = Canoe
I had a very strange conversation in Scotland once trying to rent a “Canoe”

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.



Now get back to being the advice board monitor !!

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".

Turtle

This is just the latest iteration
of a really really old discussion. It’s far from a new topic.



I think I will take Frank in Miamis advice. PADDLE ON! Maybe in a King Island Kayak…traditionally paddled with a single blade.



Folks there are no hard and fast edges so lets not try to make boxes out of rubber.

it’s a type of canoe
From Oxford English dictionary:

• a canoe of a type used originally by the Inuit, made of a light frame with a watertight covering having a small opening in the top to sit in.



For those who prefer Merriam Webster:

1: an Eskimo canoe made of a frame covered with skins except for a small opening in the center and propelled by a double-bladed paddle

2: a portable boat styled like an Eskimo kayak

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.

It’s so nice to be able to jettison
your own judgement, and rely on people you never met, and who never paddled a thing.

Really full of yourself
How do you know what the contributors to that august document do for a hobby.



Get back to your monitors job or I’ll set Mutjob onto you !!

Thus speaks the monitor.

get over yourself g2d
I’d think by now, you’d have realized no one takes you nearly as seriously as you take yourself.

glad to annoy you and cocky.

“amuse” is more appropriate

Certainly is
Very amusing !

the dictionary annoys g2d