After some foo bars in their online forum, we did eventually manage to meet up with some of the walden qajaq society. They are a greenland kayaking group, although they primarily seem to be interested in rolling.
So I got to try out a couple more replica kayaks. I tried paddling them some distance, but the wind was strong enough to make them weather cock a good deal. Supposedly if you paddle correctly, you can compensate, but that doesn’t appear to be one of my skills.
Tyson didn’t fit any of the greenland kayaks there, so he borrowed my boat and actually managed to do a bunch with it. The first of the two qajaqs I tried was actually hard to capsize. I would try to do a roll, and get about a quarter of the way under the water before floating right back up. Eventually I figured out how to get the first 180 of the roll. The second boat was much more willing to tip over. I even did it twice unintentionally.
Another interesting phenomena is the nomenclature for the the kayaks. In white water kayaking, the cool kids refer to their kayak as a boat, so that’s what I’ve gotten used to calling them. Apparently in the Greenland community, kayaks are referred to as qajaqs (same pronounciation) and calling them boats is considered and insult. This of course means that I’ve insulted a couple of people.
Let us know what you think