The Walap is a traditional ocean-going sailing
outrigger canoe
Outrigger boats are various watercraft featuring one or more lateral support floats known as outriggers, which are fastened to one or both sides of the main hull (watercraft), hull. They can range from small dugout (boat), dugout canoes to large ...
from the
Marshall Islands
The Marshall Islands, officially the Republic of the Marshall Islands, is an island country west of the International Date Line and north of the equator in the Micronesia region of the Northwestern Pacific Ocean.
The territory consists of 29 c ...
.
It belongs to the Micronesian
proa
The ProA is the German basketball league system, second-tier Sports league, league of professional club basketball in Germany. The league comprises 16 teams. Officially the ProA is part of the ''2. Basketball Bundesliga'', which consists of the t ...
type whose main characteristics are: single main hull,
outrigger
An outrigger is a projecting structure on a boat, with specific meaning depending on types of vessel. Outriggers may also refer to legs on a wheeled vehicle that are folded out when it needs stabilization, for example on a crane that lifts he ...
-mounted float/ballast, and asymmetric hull profile. Walaps have a lee platform.
Like all pacific proas, they are always sailed with the outrigger to windward; they do not tack but "shunt" (reverse direction), so both ends of the boat are identical. The distinction between bow and stern depends only on the heading of the boat.
Walaps are not dugouts; only the keel is made of a single bread-fruit log when possible, and the rest are planks sewn together with coconut-fiber lashings, sealed with tree sap.
There are three main types of marshallese sailing canoes:
* Korkor: a small rowing/sailing canoe used for fishing and transportation in the atoll lagoons. It has a crew of one or two. Used nowadays in very popular regattas.
* Tipnol: a medium-sized sailing canoe. Used for travel and fishing in the lagoons and short distance voyaging over open water. Minimum crew is two, may transport up to ten passengers.
* Walap: a large, blue-water sailing canoe, reaching up to 30 m in length and able to carry up to 50 people and food supplies for up to seven months. Used mainly for inter-atoll voyaging.
These types can vary in design, mainly slenderness of the hull, draft deep and hull-profile asymmetry.
Five recognized styles exist: , , , and .
Walaps may well represent the most advanced sailing technology of all stone-age cultures, only equaled by Fiji's
drua.
External links
program to revive traditional sailing in the Marshall Islandsanaglyphs and stereo-pairs of a walap
References
{{Fishing vessel topics
Indigenous boats
Sailboat types
Multihulls
Outrigger canoes