View topic - Tripping canoe.

Presently my fleet consists of the following:

1 Mad River royalex Revelation 17'
1 Mad River royalex Explorer 16 '
1 Bluewater expedition kevlar Prospector
1 17 ' Pak canoe (newest).

Love them all. Jerry G

I decided to go with an 16' Evergreen Prospector. The reasons being, it's a reasonably fast boat. But it will also do fast water. For me every pound over 65 lbs. is torture. It's about 65 lbs. As far as I could tell, that's about the lightest royalex prospector around, without going to Royalite. I can use it as a solo boat when the wife would rather sit at the campsite and paint and I want to explore. I don't do a lot of fast water, probably less than 5% of my paddling, it doesn't make sense to own a Starburst or a Dumoines where so much speed has been sacrificed for manouverability. It's just barely big enough for a major trip , but more than adequate for the 3 to 10 day trips I do most of the time. I think the next best selling point was my wife talking to the guy who took his new one to the Paddle the Don event. He couldn't stop talking about how much he loved it. I'm sure I'll have lots of pics of it after the long may weekend.
Evergreen is 15 minutes from my house, so it just made sense to shop there.

Anyway I really enjoyed this thread and the poll was informative, I'd still like to see a lot more responses. 44 out of 1400, doesn't seem like a lot. I don't know if it a high percentage of people are multiple canoe folk, or if they were just the ones more likely to respond. We need a program that will randomly select a given percentage of the mebership and mail them out a questionaire, so we get a more balanced selection. After all, we want to be as accurate and scientific as possible. (':lol:')

Sorry, I'd vote if any of the choices matched our canoe and canoeing. One tripping canoe used for flatwater. Though the ocean is seldom really flat.

Wow, that's a totally different headspace. I avoid even big lakes, forget about oceans. Somehow I think if I was near an ocean, I'd probably be a sailboat guy. As much as I like paddling, it's the free ride in a a bit of fast water that keeps me interested. I've also had a blast playing in the swell out on Old Woman Bay, Lake Superior, but that was playboating, not like canoeing at all. A twenty six footer and a few thousand miles of coastline could keep me happy for a long time.

I'd like to build up enough moving water skills to do some northern river trip some day. But in the meantime, there's a lifetime of salt water trips to do here.

Our approach to canoeing was to continue visiting the backcountry despite having a child. So canoeing was the best answer for us. We also greatly value the exercise we used to get from hiking, cycling and skiing, and now partially get from propelling the canoe, so we're not interested in sailing or drifting.

As I've said before, though, any form of non-motorized recreation is fine with me, so I have nothing against those who sail or drift. I do have a bit of a problem with playboating, since the upstream shuttle amounts to the sport being more motorized.

Went on a sailing trip in the West Indies on a 41' footer with a good skipper (not me)and an adequate crew(me ,my wife and his wife)...and what impressed me was that most of the time you were traveling at tandem canoe speed or less. There were the trade winds from Africa to spice and speed things up ,reef sails ,white knuckles and do your dining with one hand...but mostly I remember putt puttinging along on the auxiliary power...sort of a bummer..but necessary. It fulfilled a dream but made me realize how much I really appreciated the beauty, simplicity and utility of canoes. Since then the others have moved on to trawlers. We stay with canoes and maybe a little Boston Whaler in the mix.

bubba

Yes, that certainly is backed up by the history of canoes. Chilko Lake provides another example. It is 40 miles long, with incredible pristine mountain scenery, and a reputation for nasty blows. There are no sailboats on it, and only a few small powerboats. Those few who canoe on it find they can travel the entire lake, while the powerboats usually can't carry enough fuel to get to the far end and back. Like, how could you do one of these long cross-country watercourse trips with anything but a canoe?

12' mohawk XL-12 playboat
15' cedar strip (use for soloing)
16' Nova Craft Prospecter
18' Wenonah Sundowner
jim

All built by me, cedarstips

15' Osprey (solo)
2-17' 1/2 Winisks
18 1/2 Quetico
17 1/2' Barracuda (almost finished, solo)

One big old 19 foot scott freighter canoe for my drunken relatives from the east coast

You like a big canoe?
That's impessive that you built them all

Norman i love canoes, i want to ride them all over the place, stick it in my river!