: The secret ingredient to ensure stability is ballast.

: Is ballast a dirty word?

: Why has this simple concept been so ignored?

For me, having a light boat is all about carrying it and lifting it up on the roof rack.
Once paddling, a light boat is not that important to me.
Having fixed ballast in the boat is not very appealing, unless you mean 'strapped in' ballast. I think of fixed ballast in sailboat terms; glassed in.

: Do we think we are better paddles if we can paddle unstable
: kayak designs without the ballist they were originally intended to
: use?

: Native paddlers built work boats to carry a load,
: and to be a work platform. They used ballist to make
: kayaks stable.

Were Greenland kayaks ever ballasted?
I certainly agree with your argument when it comes to canoes- it's pretty funny that so many 'Prospector'-type canoes are used for day trips. IMO, they don't perform properly without (at least) a few hundred pounds of cargo.

: All the
: weight
: is in your upper body

Just wait a few years!

;-)

John