[HN Gopher] In southern France, unique boats revive a lost way o...
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       In southern France, unique boats revive a lost way of life
        
       Author : lermontov
       Score  : 43 points
       Date   : 2022-01-27 05:20 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.atlasobscura.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.atlasobscura.com)
        
       | trhway wrote:
       | If you're in Mexico City - ancient canals of the Floating Gardens
       | 
       | https://slightnorth.com/xochimilco-boat-guide-mexico-city/
        
       | Someone wrote:
       | FTA: _a traditional lightweight wooden fishing boat called a nego
       | chin--Provencal for "drown the dog," a reference to its
       | inherently unstable low and flat-bottomed shape_
       | 
       | Looking at those pictures, I don't see how these things are
       | _inherently_ unstable. I can believe they won't feel stable when
       | standing upright in them, and falling out of such a boat is easy,
       | but with such a flat bottom, how can they capsize when left alone
       | in the water? It more or less looks like an oversized stand-up
       | paddling boat.
        
         | WJW wrote:
         | Capsizing when left alone in the water is not the usual measure
         | of ship (in)stability, rather we typically use the magnitude of
         | the righting moment when the ship gets out of vertical. Shallow
         | flat-bottomed ships are quite unstable from a ship stability
         | perspective, because of their relatively high center of gravity
         | and their resulting short KG distance (see also
         | https://www.marineinsight.com/naval-architecture/ship-
         | stabil...).
         | 
         | When a flat-bottomed ship gets out of balance, the righting
         | moment is fairly small compared to either a deeper boat with
         | ballast or a boat with a keel. Both of those ships are much
         | more stable than nego chin boats or indeed standup paddle
         | boards. Whether someone is standing on top of them to manually
         | keep them upright is not relevant to whether the boat itself is
         | stable or not.
        
         | alx__ wrote:
         | Yeah has the same idea as a stand-up paddle board. There's a
         | learning curve but once you understand the balance it becomes
         | something you don't think about
        
       | reddog wrote:
       | The images of the boat in this article are disappointing but it
       | appears to be very similar to the pirogues that are common in S
       | Louisiana Cajun country. Makes sense.
       | 
       | http://www.unclejohns.com/boat/default.htm
        
       | marvin wrote:
       | My Provencal partner with an interest in etymology, thinks that
       | nego chin, "dog-drowner" refers to the kind of ugly box one would
       | use when euthanizing a dog, rather than hinting that a dog might
       | drown if it took a ride in the boat. We just assumed that this
       | black humor was too dark for an upbeat American article on
       | traditional craftmanship :)
       | 
       | Not absolutely certain on this, though, but I thought it was an
       | interesting commentary on southern French humor and sentiment.
        
       | d--b wrote:
       | I live very close, I had no idea these had disappeared and
       | reappeared, they're really part of the town now. Kind of like
       | punting in oxford.
       | 
       | One thing that's not mentioned here is that the river is really
       | shallow (like 1 foot deep in many places). So you often have to
       | walk the boat. And the boats have to go below bridges that are
       | also really low, so whoever is in the boat needs to completely
       | lie down to go under the bridges. It is somewhat scary.
        
         | sayrer wrote:
         | Oh interesting! I lived nearby as a child and I remember these
         | boats, but I didn't know they had been revived.
         | 
         | In case anyone visits, this is upstream:
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fontaine_de_Vaucluse_(spring)
        
           | pbk wrote:
           | If you had asked me how big the HN audience is in l'Isle sur
           | la Sorgue I would not have guessed more than 0 :-) A very
           | special place indeed.
        
           | d--b wrote:
           | Yes, they have races in l'Isle sur la Sorgues now, and
           | there's always a few of them crossing the town. Much less
           | popular than kayaks and canoe (cause totally impossible to
           | handle), but they're the only ones that can go below the
           | bridges.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | IvanaSays wrote:
       | Beautiful!
        
       | zwieback wrote:
       | From the same site: Spreewald near Berlin, where they use similar
       | boats to ride along the shallow canals:
       | https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/spreewald
        
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       (page generated 2022-01-28 23:01 UTC)