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Michael Daly

wrote:
I have an ottertail that I use in my sea kayak for a change of pace and
muscles.

I've been thinking of making a short-shaft ottertail for that.

Only in deep, mostly flat, water. Kneeling in a 22" wide boat
using a single blade paddle would be quite beyond most paddlers I know,
except for sprinter racers.

Canoe racers do it all the time and those racing canoes have negative initial
stability. They don't look 22" wide either. They have to brace a lot if waves
whip up more than a few inches high!

The pics I have seen of Aleuts look like
the are sitting, but I haven't seen them all.

Take a look at the size of a King Island or similar kayak's cockpit. The
coaming diameter allowed them to put two people in back-to-back with the forward
facing one paddling. The coamings are so high that using a double blade paddle
is awkward. Of the few rolls the Aleut used (that I know of), one was a single
blade roll (documented in D.Hutchinson's "Eskimo Rolling" book).

Mike