Pirogues
are flat bottom hulls made from 3 panels. The flat bottom provides
excellent primary stability and can carry much weight while drafting
little water. Traditional pirogues are great simple boats to but
they do have a some draw backs:.
1)
They are wide at the top so a paddler has to extend their arms wide
to reach over the sides. This can result in more difficult paddling.
2)
Because of the flat bottom, the hull can carry heavy loads and draft
little water. However, this becomes an issue if the hull is loaded
with minimal weight and floats high in the water. This can lead
to unstability because the center of gravity of paddler and boat
is raised.
3)
The flat bottom can making maintaining a straight course difficult
in windy conditions.
To
address these issues, we took our original Touring
Pirogue plans and added a top tumblehome panel and sligth V-bottom.
Shown below is a cross section of our "Touring Pirogue"
layed on top of the cross section of the "Touring Pirogue-TV".
The
tumblehome panel makes reaching the water with the paddle much easier.
It also allowed us to lower the maximum beam down toward the water.
The bottom panels were narrowed slightly. This, along with the slight
V-bottom the allowsthe hull to sit just a bit lower in the water.
All 4 features combined makes for very easy and stable paddling.
