You also have to remember that most people in our modern 20th century culture do not grow up in kayaks and find bracing, sculling, and rowing as easy as walking. Most Greenland cultures had 10 or 20 varieties of rolls that they could do with a fish in one hand, a seal on a line in one hand, with a paddle, without a paddle, etc. Some Inuit cultures actually didn't roll! (I'm sure they were experts at bracing, though!)

One book I have relates the story of outdoor writer Peter Stark, who went kayaking in Qaanaaq, northern Greenland. He asked his host what he would do if he tipped over. "The lifelong hunter considered the question if it had not previously occurred to him, then replied,'Drown.'"

Considering that with few exceptions, most of us will never be as skilled of paddlers as the native paddlers who relied on kayaks for their livelihoods, it does seem foolhardy for those of us more "landlubberly" paddlers to not have bulkheads (or other positive flotation).

Shawn

> Most of the post below suggest that only the foolhardy would build a kayak
> without bulkheads/hatches due to safety reasons. Do the native paddlers in
> Greenland, Alaska, etc use bulkheads in their boats? When did it become
> conventional wisdom that kayaks without bulkheads were unsafe?