May be a drain plug to drain?
I ordered a custom QCC Q400S which has a rear hatch only. I had them add a front bulkhead, and when they did that, they adapted one of the front rigging fittings to unscrew as a drain plug - this was their idea, which I appreciate. They put a pinhole in the bulkhead to equalize air pressure, but as far as I know have never had water in the front space. I wouldn’t go without a front bulkhead, and the drain plug allowed a clean front deck which I prefer. However, I do not camp or carry much stuff, so all can go in the back hatch. It appears they don’t make any single-hatch boats any more.
@PaddleDog52 said:
I wonder why tandem kayaks need extra width .
Pretty sure it’s just to get the required displacement to float two people instead of one. You need twice as much displaced volume and I don’t think you’ll see a 25 to 35 foot long tandem anytime soon - have to go wider to have a reasonable length and draft.
Triton Double 22’-1" x 22-1/2"
A fun double kayak, suitable for the medium to large paddlers. The kayak is fast and maneuvrable its features taken from the Explorer to produce a double sea kayak that is ideal for weekend and week long trips. The Triton is suitable for the intermediate to advanced paddlers.
The Triton is fitted with the High performance glass seat, unless otherwise requested. A retractable skeg is a standard feature, but a rudder can be fitted as an optional extra. The Triton has four fibreglass bulkheads, 2 hatches (front and rear) and an extra 7.5" (30 cm) day hatch situated behind the stern paddler. Standard keyhole cockpits provide good control and enable easy entry and exit. A recess for two parachute flares is situated between the two kayakers. The kayak can be Eskimo rolled very easily. Rescuing this double kayak is relatively easy as all water in the cockpits will empty quickly when the bow of the kayak is lifted. The Triton is a high performance sporty sea kayak for paddlers who want a fast, seaworthy double kayak.
A day/weekend kayak for the medium to large sized paddlers, length: 673 cm, width: 57 cm, depth: 34 cm, overall volume: 476.5 litres, front hatch volume: 73 litres, cockpit volume: 147 litres, day hatch volume: 37.5 litres, rear hatch volume: 56 litres.
22’-1" x 22-1/2" is thinnest sea kayak I can find. Elizabeth O’Connor went around Long island with one to raise about 180 grand for charity.
Epic tandem ski
Length: 24’ 11" (7.6 m)
Width: 19" (48.3 cm)
Depth: 16" (40 cm)
Capacity: 530 lbs (240 kg) optimum team weight 130-190 kg
I paddled with a couple that were in a West Side Boat Shop tandem that was I think 21 inches wide. So tandems don’t have to be wide.
This discussion went a bit off the rails from the original question. But it always does with rudders/skegs. To the original question, there is not a clear chicken and egg between the boat designs and the choice of tracking device here. To this day there can be a ton of difference in hull design or almost none depending on manufacturer.
Until the British invasion started in the late 1990’s/2000, North American boats were what US/Canadian paddlers had access to and they were generally stiffer tracking, higher decked boats. There were some interesting designs. like the Kruger sea canoes and the Mariner design, that were designed to be lower profile and probably would work as well if someone retrofitted them with a skeg rather than a rudder, or for more casual paddling purposes nothing at all. But there were fewer sea kayakers and a smaller number of them than later on considered rolling to be a core skill. My husband and I could still make a local 20-something’s jaw drop when we tried out a WW boat and rolled it even as of 2004, because their experience was that long boaters for the most part did not roll. (note this was inland.) And honestly, having had one of those North American designs it is easy to see why. They were not tuned to make rolling an easy effort. Even some the faster but less stable Seaward designs were easier to capsize than not, but still were a royal PITA to roll.
These boats had a legacy of rudders as an assumption because the lower profile, more maneuverable hulls that arrived with the British invasion hadn’t appeared or challenged the trackier, higher decked design tendency.
Then the Greenland style boats came in, we had lots more hull designs available, and the value of a rudder over a skeg became more about usage. Racing and expedition paddling often favored rudders, or both in some cases. [I am redacting an earlier statement here - suffice to say I am lousy at remembering details like names and dates so I probably should have left that looser to start. Comment from Allan Oleson below.] And individual choices - when paddlers started doing more rolling and climbing around on boats for re-entries, they (like myself) often decided that the rudder was a hindrance and better to get a skegged boat without that thing in the way.
There have been manufacturers that continued to make boats set up for either, not sure how many are still in business. Millenium was one, QCC another.
The rudder to turn a boat can be about the stiffness of the boat, but can also be about the paddler’s hesitation or their use. Truthfully, in a really long laden expedition it is hard to argue that being able to cheat at the end of a long tiring day is a bad thing.
there was also the “skudder”…or something like that…it was a skeg that retracted/deployed and also turned like a rudder. It looked complicated and likely to get stuck when you needed it to retract.
@Overstreet said:
there was also the “skudder”…or something like that…it was a skeg that retracted/deployed and also turned like a rudder. It looked complicated and likely to get stuck when you needed it to retract.
The Epic Track aster Plus system is a very effective implementation of this concept. I really like the one on my 16X.
@Allan Oleson, You are right, my context was by white guys and more modern. I may have the geography wrong too. Suffice to say I am as good at remembering those names as the titles of classical music I have played. Like not.,
Anyway, I am going to go up and edit that bit to make it looser. But specifically I am thinking of a conversation with Tom Bergh some years ago, a major trip, and either his trip or another mentioned in that conversation had gone out on a huge northern expedition with both devices.
@Celia said:
@Allan Oleson, You are right, my context was by white guys and more modern.
I guess I will have to clarify.
I was not hinting that Greenland had been circumnavigated by the native population before the white guys did. To the contrary, I doubt that anyone has done it in a kayak, neither white guys nor the native population.
On Greenland’s east coast, the northernmost place which can be reached by normal (non ice-breaking) ships is Danmarkshavn. But that is only approximately half way up along the coast. You would have to sail/paddle another 1000 km from there to reach the north tip of Greenland (which is only 740 km from the North Pole). And then you would have to go another 1000 km down the west coast before you reached the northernmost populated place, Siorapaluk.
Of course, you could paddle along the north coasts of Europe, Asia and North America and call it a Greenland circumnavigation - without ever seeing Greenland. That might be doable.
@Allan Olesen Would that I could remember details like this old conversation better, suffice to say I did much better in school at outlining major societal trends than remembering the details of anything like when and where. But I do know there was a rudder and skeg involved somewhere in one of the major northern trips by people whose names I should also be able to remember. The reason was to gain the benefits of both in weighty conditions.
On the point of the original question, the hull design in this case was likely less crucial than the conditions of the trip.