Word: kayak
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Several Harvard athletes from this year's Olympics may also have a shot at the gold, said John P. Veneziano, sports information director. Norman D. Bellingham '94, who will be rowing in the kayak pairs competition, is promising--particularly since he won the gold medal in that competition in 1988, said Veneziano. Bellingham was a 1991 member of the junior varsity crew team...
...goal was to retrace, in part, the bold voyages of early Polynesian seafarers who gave this vast area a common culture, now corrupt and moribund. Theroux took the big hops by plane or ship. But his preferred mode of travel was a collapsible, 16-ft.-long French-made kayak, which he paddled -- carefully -- through dangerous waters infested by crocodiles, sharks and stinging Portuguese man-of-wars...
...most intriguing elements of baidarka design are those that show the Aleuts' rejection of typical kayak forms in favor of a distinctive approach. Dyson speculates that the forked bow prevents the boat from submarining in waves. It also gives the kayak the speed advantage of a longer, slenderer craft, and may set up a wave that counteracts the drag-inducing bow wave of ordinary designs. The oddly configured stern may help the kayak make the transition from a vessel that pushes through the water to one that planes on top of the water...
Dyson believes that the baidarka will have a robust future, influencing the shape of modern sport kayaks. Physicist Francis Clauser designed a forked-bow craft for a syndicate in the 1986-87 America's Cup race. Dyson still speaks of the genius of the Aleut kayak builders with reverence: "Modern science has recognized all the elements that went into the baidarka, but nobody put them together to achieve a synthesis the way the Aleuts...