In southern France, unique boats revive a lost way of life | Hacker News Reader

In southern France, unique boats revive a lost way of life

atlasobscura.com

56 pointslermontov21 comments

My Provençal partner with an interest in etymology, thinks that négo 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.

It just means the the boat is unstable, it's not quite that bad. Calling something a "widow maker" in English is pretty close.

Or, in video games / programming, a "footgun"

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.

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)

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.

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.

Well covid helped spread people out ;-)

FTA: a traditional lightweight wooden fishing boat called a négo chin—Provençal 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.

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

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 négo 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.

I know about that, but for me, that inherently made it seem like they meant the term from physics (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instability), as with rowing singles used in racing, which don’t have a righting moment/have a negative righting moment.

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

It looks like a punt, but maybe it has some specific regional features. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punt_(boat)

If you're assuming some sort of cultural connection, I'd doubt there's much. French emigrants to New-France came from the North-Western Atlantic provinces and Paris for the most part. As far away to Provence as you can be.

My guess would be convergent evolution.

If you're in Mexico City - ancient canals of the Floating Gardens

https://slightnorth.com/xochimilco-boat-guide-mexico-city/

Cute ! I haven't gone back to L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue and Fontaine-de-Vaucluse in over 15 years. I don't remember seeing those around. I'll definitely keep my eyes open next time !

From the same site: Spreewald near Berlin, where they use similar boats to ride along the shallow canals: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/spreewald

Quite similar to Tübingen's Stocherkahn: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C3%BCbinger_Stocherkahn

Ah yes, good memories of Schulausflug from Stuttgart to Tübingen, the whole class went and once a pretty big group tipped into the water. Probably not following orders of the captain

You learn to keep your CG over the CB[ouyancy] if you don't want to swim.

CB changes as the boat leans.

In solo canoes, lean reduces the contact area of the hull against the water and reduces drag.

Beautiful!

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