Box boat
The box boat is a collapsible fixed kayak made of aluminum that was developed in the late 1940s .
history
Few people owned a car in the early post-war years. Canoes were therefore particularly popular among canoeists; they could be dismantled and stowed in bags or pack sacks and transported by bus and train using public transport. That is why there was a large number of folding boat models from various manufacturers available on the market . Not only large and well-known folding boat yards like Klepper met the demand, also numerous small craft businesses had an economic mainstay in folding boat construction.
In addition to the folding boats, festival boats continued to be built and marketed. Towards the end of the 1940s, the idea of making kayaks from aircraft tanks and floats arose on Lake Constance around Friedrichshafen . The aluminum sheet used in aviation is well suited for use in very robust kayaks due to its good material properties and corrosion resistance, even against salt water. The same idea came up in other places (for example, the Grumman company in the United States ). Due to the aircraft industry in Friedrichshafen with the companies Dornier and Zeppelin , the material aluminum sheet was known and available in the region. Aluminum kayaks were therefore a common sight on Lake Constance in the 1950s. The disadvantage of the aluminum kayaks was the limited transport options using public transport.
The suitcase boat
Horst Hanigck from Lindau therefore designed an aluminum kayak that could be broken down into several individual segments. The segments could be interlocked and fitted into two handy transport bags, which is what gave the canoe its name. Hanigck was thus able to combine the advantages of the extraordinarily robust aluminum fixed kayak with those of the folding boat. This combination of advantages was not even bought at the price of a higher boat weight - at 20.8 kg for the single-seater and 28 kg for the two-seater, the box boats were no heavier than conventional folding boats. In addition, three or four kayaks could be assembled with the middle segments of other box boats, according to contemporary witness reports there were also nine kayaks.
Box boats were used not only on Lake Constance, but also on longer journeys. The suitcase boat's insensitivity to salt water was proven during a circumnavigation of the western Mediterranean in the 1950s. In the long term, however, the box boat could not hold its own in the market. The causes may have been the material price of the aluminum alloy used in aircraft construction or the sealing of the individual segments. Today only one surviving copy of the box boat is reported, which is located in the Lindau Canoe Club.
The idea of the collapsible suitcase boat was later taken up again in divisible kayaks and Canadians, albeit no longer with the large number of segments.
literature
- KANU Magazin # 97 (March 2011), p. 12