HOME
*



picture info

Baidarkas
The baidarka or Aleutian kayak (Aleut: iqyax) is a watercraft consisting of soft skin (artificial or natural) over a rigid space frame. Its initial design was created by the native Aleut (or Unangan) people of the Aleutian Islands. The Aleut people were surrounded by treacherous waters and required water transportation and a hunting vessel. Due to the geography and climate of the Aleutian Islands, trees and wood were in scarce supply and the people relied primarily on driftwood to create the framework of the kayak, which was covered with the skins of sea mammals. Two types of boats were created, one with a covered deck that was used as a hunting kayak, and another that was open and capable of carrying goods and people from one island to another. Modern baidarkas are fast collapsible rowing boats, based on aluminum alloy frame with skin made of PVC fabric. Often the inflatable buoyancy chambers are embedded into the skin, resulting in increased safety and performance. Some desig ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Aleut People
The Aleuts ( ; russian: Алеуты, Aleuty) are the indigenous people of the Aleutian Islands, which are located between the North Pacific Ocean and the Bering Sea. Both the Aleut people and the islands are politically divided between the US state of Alaska and the Russian administrative division of Kamchatka Krai. Etymology In the Aleut language they are known by the endonyms Unangan (eastern dialect) and Unangas (western dialect), both of which mean "people". The Russian term "Aleut" was a general term used for both the native population of the Aleutian Islands and their neighbors to the east in the Kodiak Archipelago, who were also referred to as "Pacific Eskimos". Language Aleut people speak Unangam Tunuu, the Aleut language, as well as English and Russian in the United States and Russia respectively. An estimated 150 people in the United States and five people in Russia speak Aleut.
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Contemporary Baidarka With Sail
Contemporary history, in English-language historiography, is a subset of modern history that describes the historical period from approximately 1945 to the present. Contemporary history is either a subset of the late modern period, or it is one of the three major subsets of modern history, alongside the early modern period and the late modern period. In the social sciences, contemporary history is also continuous with, and related to, the rise of postmodernity. Contemporary history is politically dominated by the Cold War (1947–1991) between the Western Bloc, led by the United States, and the Eastern Bloc, led by the Soviet Union. The confrontation spurred fears of a nuclear war. An all-out "hot" war was avoided, but both sides intervened in the internal politics of smaller nations in their bid for global influence and via proxy wars. The Cold War ultimately ended with the Revolutions of 1989 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The latter stages and afte ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  




Russia
Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-eighth of Earth's inhabitable landmass. Russia extends across eleven time zones and shares land boundaries with fourteen countries, more than any other country but China. It is the world's ninth-most populous country and Europe's most populous country, with a population of 146 million people. The country's capital and largest city is Moscow, the largest city entirely within Europe. Saint Petersburg is Russia's cultural centre and second-largest city. Other major urban areas include Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod, and Kazan. The East Slavs emerged as a recognisable group in Europe between the 3rd and 8th centuries CE. Kievan Rus' arose as a state in the 9th century, and in 988, it adopted Orthodox Christianity from the ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Sergie Sovoroff
Sergie Sovoroff (September 17, 1901 – September 27, 1989) was an Aleut educational leader. He was born on Umnak Island in the Aleut village of Nikolski in 1902. Sovoroff was born only nine years before the United States government outlawed sea otter hunting. After 1911, the need and use of ''iqya-x'', Aleut sea kayaks, declined abruptly. But Sovoroff continued to see a need for creating model sea kayaks, known in his days by the Russian name "baidarka". Sovoroff "...kept up the tradition of making kayak models". Model sea kayaks built by Sovoroff, quite often with three hatches with a Russian Orthodox priest seated in the middle hatch, can be seen in many museums around the world. These model sea kayaks, finely crafted by Sovoroff, often equipped with a rudder on the stern of the kayak, all too frequently bear the name of the person who purchased them or donated them to the museum, and not Sovoroff's. Sergie died on September 27, 1989 and is buried in Nikolski, Alaska. ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Kenneth Brower
Kenneth Brower is an American writer known for his natural environment writings. His published works include articles with the National Geographic Society, The Atlantic Monthly, Smithsonian, Audubon, and several other periodicals. Brower has written for the National Geographic Society. Published articles have appeared in National Geographic, National Geographic Books, National Geographic Traveler, National Geographic History & Culture (online) and National Geographic Adventure. He has also published articles with The Atlantic (Formerly known as ''The Atlantic Monthly''). Brower is the author of several books about environmental issues and natural history. His publications include ''The Starship and the Canoe'' () about the physicist Freeman Dyson and his son George Dyson; ''Freeing Keiko: The Journey of a Killer Whale from Free Willy to the Wild'', about the Orca, Keiko, made famous by the motion picture Free Willy; And his book ''Yosemite: An American Treasure'' is i ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


George Dyson (science Historian)
George Dyson (born 26 March 1953) is an American non-fiction author and historian of technology whose publications broadly cover the evolution of technology in relation to the physical environment and the direction of society. He has written on a wide range of topics, including the history of computing, the development of algorithms and intelligence, communications systems, space exploration, and the design of watercraft. Early life George Dyson is the son of the theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson and mathematician Verena Huber-Dyson, the brother of technology analyst Esther Dyson, and the grandson of the British composer Sir George Dyson. Dyson's early life is described in Kenneth Brower's book ''The Starship and the Canoe.'' When he was sixteen he went to live in British Columbia to pursue his interest in kayaking. From 1972 to 1975, he lived in a treehouse at a height of 30 metres that he built from salvaged materials on the shore of Burrard Inlet. Dyson became a Canad ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Kayak - Fort Ross State Historic Park - Jenner, California - Stierch
A kayak is a small, narrow watercraft which is typically propelled by means of a double-bladed paddle. The word kayak originates from the Greenlandic word ''qajaq'' (). The traditional kayak has a covered deck and one or more cockpits, each seating one paddler. The cockpit is sometimes covered by a spray deck that prevents the entry of water from waves or spray, differentiating the craft from a canoe. The spray deck makes it possible for suitably skilled kayakers to roll the kayak: that is, to capsize and right it without it filling with water or ejecting the paddler. ] Some modern boats vary considerably from a traditional design but still claim the title "kayak", for instance in eliminating the cockpit by seating the paddler on top of the boat ("sit-on-top" kayaks); having inflated air chambers surrounding the boat; replacing the single hull with twin hulls; and replacing paddles with other human-powered propulsion methods, such as foot-powered rotational propellers and "fl ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Drift Wood
__NOTOC__ Driftwood is wood that has been washed onto a shore or beach of a sea, lake, or river by the action of winds, tides or waves. In some waterfront areas, driftwood is a major nuisance. However, the driftwood provides shelter and food for birds, fish and other aquatic species as it floats in the ocean. Gribbles, shipworms and bacteria decompose the wood and gradually turn it into nutrients that are reintroduced to the food web. Sometimes, the partially decomposed wood washes ashore, where it also shelters birds, plants, and other species. Driftwood can become the foundation for sand dunes. Most driftwood is the remains of trees, in whole or part, that have been washed into the ocean, due to flooding, high winds, or other natural occurrences, or as the result of logging. There is also a subset of driftwood known as drift lumber. Drift lumber includes the remains of man-made wooden objects, such as buildings and their contents washed into the sea during storms, woode ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Pinniped
Pinnipeds (pronounced ), commonly known as seals, are a widely range (biology), distributed and diverse clade of carnivorous, fin-footed, semiaquatic, mostly marine mammal, marine mammals. They comprise the extant taxon, extant family (biology), families Odobenidae (whose only living member is the walrus), Otariidae (the eared seals: sea lions and fur seals), and Phocidae (the earless seals, or true seals). There are 34 extant species of pinnipeds, and more than 50 extinct species have been described from fossils. While seals were historically thought to have descended from two ancestral lines, molecular phylogenetics, molecular evidence supports them as a monophyletic lineage (descended from one ancestral line). Pinnipeds belong to the order Carnivora; their closest living relatives are Musteloidea, musteloids (Mustelidae, weasels, Procyonidae, raccoons, skunks, and red pandas), having diverged about 50 million years ago. Seals range in size from the and Baikal sea ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Bow (ship)
The bow () is the forward part of the hull of a ship or boat, the point that is usually most forward when the vessel is underway. The aft end of the boat is the stern. Prow may be used as a synonym for bow or it may mean the forward-most part of the bow above the waterline. Function A ship's bow should be designed to enable the hull to pass efficiently through the water. Bow shapes vary according to the speed of the boat, the seas or waterways being navigated, and the vessel's function. Where sea conditions are likely to promote pitching, it is useful if the bow provides reserve buoyancy; a flared bow (a raked stem with flared topsides) is ideal to reduce the amount of water shipped over the bow. Ideally, the bow should reduce the resistance and should be tall enough to prevent water from regularly washing over the top of it. Large commercial barges on inland waterways rarely meet big waves and may have remarkably little freeboard at the bow, whereas fast military ve ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]