Some thoughts on boat design --- I have designed only one canoe, so I do not present myself as a pro, or even a skilled amateur, but since the boat I built from my design met my needs and I believe that it was a success, I will explain what I considered when executing my design. There are several factors involved when creating a canoe design, some of which are more important than others, but none can be completely ignored, or one risks ending up with a boat that has a serious deficiency. They are: 1. Ease of paddling; will the boat move quickly with minimal effort? 2. Stability; how tippy does the boat feel, and how much does it ultimately resist tipping over? 3. Maneuverability: can the boat be turned readily when necessary? 4. Load carrying: can the boat handle the anticipated weight that will be on board without any untoward behaviors? 5. Seakindliness; will the boat handle waves and winds that may be encountered? Ease of paddling is a measure of the effort we have to expend to get the boat to move forward at a particular speed, and can actually better be referred to as drag. Drag has two primary components: hydrodynamic drag, and aerodynamic drag. Hydrodynamic drag can be further divided into four components: form drag, parasite drag, wave drag, and steering drag. Form drag is a function of the physical shape that is moving through the water. Imagine holding your hand out the window of a car at speed. If your palm is facing forward, you feel a certain amount of force against your hand. Then change the shape that you present to the slipstream by turning your hand palm down. You will feel less force because the shape (form) now resists the air flow less. Boat hulls behave the same way. Think of a boat hull shaped like a shoebox, and imagine how much force will be needed to move it through the water. Change the shape from shoebox to cylinder, and the drag decreases; change from cylinder to barracuda, and we see an even larger drag decrease. We see from this that form drag is influenced both by the cross section of the hull shape (rectangle, semicircle, rectangle with the corners rounded, etc.) and by how we move the water as it approaches the maximum cross section. Imagine that we have half a canoe, with the open end sealed with a bulkhead. If we paddle the canoe with the bulkhead forward, we are going to see a very large amount of drag. If we then reverse and paddle with the pointy end forward, drag is much reduced, even though the maximum cross section is exactly the same in both cases. The drag is affected by how fast the water has to change its direction to get around the beamiest part of our boat. Therefore, boats that are intended to move rapidly with as little energy expended as possible are always streamlined. Think garbage scow versus attack submarine.