Josef Appel
The master carpenter Josef Appel is considered to be one of the pioneers of plastic boat building for kayaks and canoes .
Josef Appel was active in kayaking himself. Already at the end of the 1950s he was producing one-piece single kayaks from the then revolutionary material GRP ( glass fiber reinforced plastic ) in his workshop at Theresienstrasse 148 in Munich for sporting competition purposes .
Design feature
Appel constructed divisible boats, the halves of which were bolted in the cockpit area. In the case of the kayaks, the parts could be plugged into each other, which enabled easy transport by train or car.
Well-known boat types
The Canadian C6
Josef Appel recognized that the existing nine to 11 meter long wooden Canadians were often too big for the youth work of smaller clubs and were hardly transportable with the possibilities at the time. The idealist Appel then came up with the “C 6”, a GRP “team canoe” that could be dismantled into two equal parts, initially six meters long and one meter wide, which was manufactured in autumn 1959. Since the northern German area around Hamburg was considered a stronghold of Canadian sports, Appel sent his new product to the Hamburg Canoe Club for an intensive practical test. The optimization possibilities identified there with regard to a more stable water situation as well as a more favorable distribution of space were realized at Appel by redesigning the boat so that in January 1960 the boat was 6.20 meters long (disassembled 3.10 meters each), a width of 1, 12 meters and a height of 50 centimeters. The crew consisted of seven people, one of whom only steered.
The Appel-Eski
In the pre- and post-war period, many do-it-yourself constructions made of strips and canvas were based on the classic Greenland kayaks. In the winter of 1961/62 Josef Appel offered a 5 m long and 63 cm wide, divisible Eski single made of GRP for the first time. The majority of the hiking paddlers used collapsible folding boats from well-known manufacturers, which were tied up in the Bundesbahn's luggage van and transported to the starting point of the paddling tour, which was also possible at a bicycle price with the dismantled and nested 2.75 meter long Appel Eski. The advantage of the Appel-Eski over the folding boats was the quick assembly (approx. 8 minutes), the greater robustness in the water when coming into contact with stone or branch obstacles and the often slightly higher speed. Initial concerns about the tightness of the connection between the two halves of the fuselage and the strength of the screw connection were not confirmed. At that time, the laminate was of high quality with a relatively low weight (approx. 21 kg), as Appel pressed the hull between two molds to minimize the amount of polyester resin, thus anticipating the principle of today's vacuum process. The smooth-surfaced inside of the storage space was praised, which after removing the seat made it possible to load the boat without any problems without getting caught on frames or sents. The Appel-Eski also proved itself in the area of the tide-dependent north German river mouths and in the fjords of the Baltic Sea coast. Appel also praised his product as "well proven in the heaviest whitewater" (1962). Later, an intermediate piece about 1.50 meters long was offered, which transformed the single Eski into a somewhat wobbly, but at the time quite fast two-piece, 6.5 meters long. This intermediate piece did not lengthen the boat when it was dismantled because it was pushed over the narrow tip.
The Appel one touring kayak
Later, Appel produced a single hiker's kayak made of GRP with a length of 4.50 meters without an eski character. This could also be dismantled into two parts by screwing. However, in contrast to the Eski, the front part was pushed into the rear half.