• Articles,  Build It Yourself,  Kayaks

    Building a Nikumi

    Safety Note: A vinyl skin is not safe for normal use. This is for show only. Hundreds of years ago, the Aleuts paddled slender kayaks up and down the west coast of North America in search of sealskins and adventure. Their kayaks, called baidarkas by the Russians, were typically narrow, fast, and featured crazy looking bifid or split bows. I first gained an interest in this type of kayak after reading George Dyson’s visionary book Baidarka, and the more I read, the more interesting these kayaks became to me. Eventually, I purchased Wolfgang Brinck’s The Aleutian Kayak with the intension of building a traditional baidarka using traditional methods. But, after…