Canoes

A canoe is a small narrow boat, typically human-powered, though it may also be powered by sails or small electric or gas motors. Canoes usually are pointed at both bow and stern and are normally open on top, but can be covered. more...

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In its human-powered form, the canoe is ordinarily propelled by the use of paddles, with the number of paddlers (most commonly two) dependent on the size of the canoe. Paddlers face in the direction of travel, either seated on supports in the hull, or kneeling directly upon the hull. Paddling can be contrasted with rowing, where the rowers face away from the direction of travel (though a wide canoe can be fitted with oarlocks and rowed). Paddles may be single-bladed or double-bladed.

The oldest recovered canoe in the world is the canoe of Pesse. According to C14 dating analysis it has been constructed somewhere between 8200 and 7600 B.C. This canoe is exhibited in the Drents Museum in Assen, Netherlands.

Sailing canoes (see Canoe Sailing) are propelled by means of a variety of sailing rigs. Common classes of modern sailing canoes include the 5 m² and the International 10 m² Sailing canoes. The latter is otherwise known as the International Canoe, and is one of the fastest and oldest competitively sailed boat classes in the western world. The log canoe of the Chesapeake Bay is in the modern sense not a canoe at all, though it evolved through the enlargement of dugout canoes.

Design and construction

Parts of a canoe

Bow; Stern; Hull; Seat (whitewater canoes may have a foam 'saddle' in place of a seat); Thwart - a horizontal crossbeam near the top of the hull; Gunwale (pronounced gunnel) - the top edge of the hull; Deck (under which a flotation compartment or foam block may be located which prevent the canoe from sinking if capsized or swamped);

Optional features in modern canoes (not shown in diagram):

Yoke - a thwart across the center of the boat to allow one person to carry the canoe, sometimes molded to the shape of the shoulders.; Keel - a structural element that runs along the bottom of the canoe's hull, from the bow to the stern, serving as the foundation or spine of its structure and, depending on its depth, providing some directional control and stability.; Flotation bags - inflatable air bags to prevent swamping the canoe in rapids; Spraydeck - a cover to prevent water entering the canoe;

The portion of the hull between the waterline and the top of the gunwale is called the freeboard.

Canoe materials

The earliest canoes were made from natural materials:

Early canoes were wooden , often simply hollowed-out tree trunks (see dugout). This technology is still practiced in some parts of the world. Modern wooden canoes may be wood strip (also, \"stripper\"), wood-and-canvas, stitch-and-glue, glued plywood lapstrake, or birchbark built by dedicated artisans. Such canoes can be very functional, lightweight, and strong, and are frequently quite beautiful works of art.; Many indigenous peoples of the Americas built canoes of tree bark, sewn with tree roots and sealed with resin. The indigenous people of the Amazon commonly used Hymenaea trees. In temperate North America, white cedar was used for the frame and bark of the Paper Birch for the exterior, with charcoal and fats mixed into the resin. A few modern canoe builders have revived and continued building birchbark canoes, including Henri Vaillancourt, Tom MacKenzie and Marcel Labelle.;

Read more at Wikipedia.org