Seakayaking
& folding kayaks
What is a folding kayak?
A folding kayak is literally a kayak that packs into one or two large bags for transportation. Modern folding boats use canvas or nylon and rubber stretched over a frame of wood or aluminum. Traditionally, kayaks were made from seal or other marine mammal skins stretched over a frame of wood or bone. A folding kayak is therefore closer to the original, traditional design of the kayak than today's modern hardshell boats. These kayaks are extremely seaworthy and stable, for example, Hannes Lindemann paddled a Klepper folding kayak across the Atlantic in the 1950s and today these kayaks are often used for arctic expeditions.The kayak on the photographs is a Raid II 500 by Nautiraid, the French folding kayak maker.
In the preface of the best book about folding kayaks the great travel writer and novelist Paul Theroux wrote:
"It is almost impossible to exaggerate the usefulness of a folding kayak. Even the hackneyed phrase "flying carpet" is appropriate to this ingeniously conceived craft. When I traveled around China by train in aid of getting material for a book, I kept wishing I had my boat with me, to go from city to city the most revealing way, by river. It was not accidental that my next travel book was the series of paddling journeys I recounted in The Happy Isles of Oceania, and the book would have been impossible without a folding kayak. Many Pacific islanders are still people of the sea. They watched me setting up my kayak on the beach; they always recognized the uniqueness of the craft and never failed to ask where they could get one. There is an immense amount to be known about this deceptively simple boat. I suspect the reason for the folding kayak's complexity is inherent in the boat's design. All other sailing craft have conventional similarities -- a little plastic motor boat bas many features in common with the QE II, but these have nothing in common with a folding kayak. Consider the shape and construction of the folding kayak, or any skin boat, and you have to reach the conclusion that its nearest equivalent is an animal's body, not a fish but a mammal, a vertebrate. It has an interior skeleton, ribs, joints, a spine; it has a head and a tail, it has a hide, it flexes. To this animal shape the paddler brings a brain, and energy, and guts." [in Complete Folding Kayaker, Ralph Diaz, ISBN 0-07-016735-6]
