Coffee Table Book of: Canoe and Kayak (Hardcover)

Description

Coffee Table Book of: Canoe and Kayak is a large format book of canoe and kayak racing, printed edge to edge in colour, one picture to a page and the widest carried across two: sprint boats on still water, slalom gates over white water, paddles, spray decks and the rest of the kit, the boats being made and cared for, the old boats the sport grew from, and a few paddlers seen far off in plain dark clothing.

The kit is laid out plain: a racing kayak paddle with two cupped wing blades, a canoe paddle with one blade and a crosswise grip, a helmet with its drain holes, a spray deck with its grab loop, a buoyancy vest, a paddling jacket with sealed cuffs, a throw bag of floating rope, a safety whistle on its cord, a slalom kayak with a loop at each end, a sprint kayak seen from above and the small rudder under a sprint hull, and out on the water and the banks, a sprint canoe on a pontoon, a four seat kayak on a riverbank, a slalom canoe by a woodland pool, a kayak in fresh snow, a canoe under a summer storm and a trailer of boats in a dewy field.

The making follows a hull mould polished smooth, carbon cloth wetted with resin, a cracked hull patched, a cedar strip canoe glued strip by strip over its forms, canvas stretched over a wooden hull, a paddle carved from pale ash, a paddle hung to dry after varnishing and an old canoe sanded for fresh paint. The past runs from a dugout hollowed from one log, a bark canoe sewn with root and a kayak of skin over a slender frame, to a folding kayak of canvas, a sailing canoe of varnished oak, a cork life jacket, an old double paddle and racing boats of thin varnished wood.

Short notes run through the book, on sprint and slalom and how they are raced, the boats, paddles and kit and how they are made, and the history of the sport: sprint races run in straight lanes on still water, each lane marked by lines of small buoys, wood and canvas canoes have cedar ribs and planks under a canvas skin that is filled and painted, unlike rowers, paddlers face the way they travel, and the paddle is never fixed to the boat, and a sprint kayak is steered by a small rudder under the hull, turned by a bar at the feet.

Printed in full colour on heavy 150gsm coated paper at 216 x 279 mm (8.5 x 11 inches), as a hardcover with the art printed on the case.