At least in my opinion. Unless the bow paddler is considerably heavier than the stern paddler they tend to be way out of trim. It will look like you are doing a wheelie with the bow way out of the water. Even a short wide boat will not be particularly stable that way. If the child is up towards that front that might help a little, but that could also be a heavy load for a 14 foot boat.
A 14 foot boat may solve your storage problem, but it's not the best paddling solution. Try before you buy.
14-foot is awfully short for a boat that you expect to carry 2 & 1/2 people in. It will have to be wide to have the capacity (as in, not a canoe), and likely pretty heavy.
I would agree If 14 feet is an absolute limit, and canoe you get will be beamy (read “slow”) to provide enough buoyancy and stability for 2 adults and a child.
If your budget limit is absolute, you are probably looking at a polyethylene or aluminum canoe. There have been a few decent Royalex and composite tandems in the 14 foot length range. Mad River Canoe made a 14’ Tahoe in Royalex and a composite 14’ Winooski for example. But you will be lucky to find any of these used in your price range anytime soon.
The Mad River Adventure 14 is a solid polyethylene canoe. It is still heavy, but not as heavy as what you are looking at. Single-layer polyethylene is a problematical material for canoes longer than about 10.5’ or so because it flexes a lot. It works better for kayaks because the deck adds rigidity.
Canoe makers get around this for boats like the Adventure 14 by molding gunwales that wrap around into the interior and integral seats that contact the bottom. These add rigidity but the seats cannot be modified to lower their height and can’t be removed.
The MRC Adventure 14 is not a canoe I would care to have because of its construction and its dimensions which physics dictates will make it relatively inefficient. But I do know of a number of people who own this boat and like it for the type of usage you have planned.
Weight vs Dollars Taking your 14’ length limit and working with canoes that fit it, there are choices between light (under 40#) and inexpensive. The Mad River Adventurer 14 is a nice paddling canoe for a short tandem. But it has a big weight drawback at 80+ pounds. The fixed center seat makes it a pain in the neck to carry solo since the seat resting on your head is the best way to balance it. The others mentioned, the Old Town Saranac and Guide are also right around the 89# mark. Old town made several royalex canoes in the short range,the 14’Hunter was a nice short tandem and was under 60#. Look at the used market were the Wenonah Fisherman and the Old Town Stillwater can be found.
I would not get in a 14 ft. canoe with two adults and a child. Not only is it inherently unstable but just too crowded to be enjoyed. I don’t know a solution to your problem but IMO it shouldn’t be a 14 ft. canoe. Can you get two 14 footers in the space? Of course that gets pricey.
tandem. Look for used, they're out there..they just don't pop up forsale everyday, but you'll enjoy something of those dimensions, even if you have to be creative in finding storage.
the storage issue The issue is that there isn’t enough room between that crossbeam and the open garage door for the boat itself- I only have about 12 inches of clearance there; I was planning on suspending it using a single 4x4 metal platform.
I could fit two 14’ boats in my garage, but I live in a townhome and have no yard whatsoever. I know 14’ isn’t ideal, but I would rather have a less than ideal boat that I can paddle now than wait five years to move to a larger house.
What's that 12 inches of clearance you are talking about? If that's how much additional space you have when putting a 14' boat between the cross beam and the edge of the open garage door, you haven't been paying attention.
Here's a re-try of what I wanted to explain before. Unless you have an unusually tall car, like a full-size van, 4x4 pickup or a Suburban, or unless your ceiling is unusually low, you can just hang the boat about a foot lower, and let the garage door go between the boat and the ceiling as it slides into its open position. I'm not seeing anything in your explanation that says you don't have room to hang the canoe a little bit lower so it misses the door. All you mention is the distance between the beam and the edge of the open door, and that misses the point.
I built a canoe hoist for my girlfriend which allows the overhead door to move a full four feet past the end of the boat when it opens. With that boat (16 feet long), I could have even made the overlap quite a bit greater if there had been less space to work with. If you were willing or able to do that same thing, you wouldn't be wanting to limit yourself to a boat that's way too short for your needs (and as mentioned already, the only thing that would make you not *able* to, is a car that's very tall or a ceiling that's extremely low, or some combination of the two).
Without an actual description, I have no idea what your 4x4 metal frame entails. I only know that with forethought, the rack need not contribute to the lack of space you speak of.
Maybe if I get a chance to take a picture of the hoist I built for my girlfriend and how it lets the garage door roll right on past the end of the boat, it will be clear what I'm trying to say. I am only harping on this in this way because I hate to see you so intent on going shopping for the wrong boat for the wrong reason. A boat that's not suitable for its intended purpose is a boat that, after being used a couple of times, just sits in storage.
being a die-hard open boater, but you might do better with two boats - a tandem and a single kayak. It solves your storage problem (at least as far a length goes), and a tandem kayak puts both paddlers closer to the middle, so it trims better and will be more stable at that shorter length.
In many cases the garage door frame height is sufficient that you can suspend a canoe or kayak high so that one end is beneath the open door and still have sufficient room for a vehicle roof to clear. This will obviously depend on the depth of your canoe at the stems, the height of your garage door frame, and the height of your vehicle roof.
Will meet your space requirements and carry 2 adults and a kid. I have one and it is a pretty decent canoe for the money, but unless you are a really big guy you will play hell car topping that thing by yourself because it weighs 80 LBS.
Radisson Look for a 14ft Radisson canoe. 14ft long, super light,and can carry 2 adults and a kid. We used one whenour kids were small and it worked good. You can find them used for a couple hundred if you watch out for them.
16 inches… So I just checked; I have about 16 inches of usable space between my suburban roof and the open garage door. The 17.5’ canoe I had before was much too big for that space; are there many canoes that would fit in that space at the ends? I didn’t think there were…
“You can’t get there from here”… …your canoe conundrum doesn’t appear fixable with a 14’. Just too much weight to have a stable (and safe)vessel. For safety’s sake, a 17’ is recommended. The only way to overcome your space predicament would be possibly two 12’ canoes. Too bad storage is a factor.
Before we give up on that,… You could have told us about having a tall car at any point in the conversation instead of stating in every reply that the end-to-end dimension was the only thing that was stopping you. The most relevant detail of all was the one you chose not to tell us until now, so the sarcasm included with that fact wasn’t really called for.
But before we give up on the idea of a longer canoe, maybe we can modify the idea suggested by Pete in his comments above. He suggested tilting the boat to clear the door, and though you waited until now to explain why that won’t probably won’t work in your case, there may still be hope. For a longer canoe, how about positioning it farther into the garage so that one end clears the overhead door, but hang it at a slant so the other end goes under the cross beam? If you can tolerate the idea of always pulling your Suburban into the garage frontward, never backward, the low end of the canoe will be over the car’s hood, and will likely clear the front edge of the roof as well (if you are not doing your own car repairs, raising the hood just partway is good enough for checking oil, etc.). As with the earlier idea, whether this will work will will depend on details that we do not know, such as how far that beam extends below the ceiling and whether you need to pull the car farther into the garage than what’s required only due to its length. However, since you already have almost enough room to overlap the door, you won’t need a lot of extra clearance for this method and it seems very likely that it will work.
remeasuring I remeasured the space from the garage door to the top of my roof rack after moving my suburban to a better position for measuring it, and it looks like my estimate was way off.
It is 23 inches. Which seems a lot more possible. It still wouldn’t have fit my 17.5’ but I’m thinking it might be possible to fit a 16’ Old Town Guide after all- bow height for that is 19 inches, leaving four inches of clearance.
PS No sarcasm was intended, I’m sorry if that came off that way. My questions were serious questions; I’m a newb who doesn’t know very much about canoes. I was assuming that I would have to fit it very close to my ceiling, but I guess that won’t be necessary.
Given your feedback I’m inclined to stick with a 16’ boat since it looks like I can fit that.
Would you recommend an Old Town Guide over a Saranac? Why or why not?
The center seat of the Saranac seems like it would be convenient for my purposes but it sounds like the Guide would be able to handle rougher water.
Unless the support cross beam in your garage extends way below the roof it should not come into play if you store the canoe gunwales up since nearly all canoes are much less deep in the center than at the stems.
As Eric suggested, you might find that arranging your hoist system such that the end of the canoe furthest from the door opening is slightly higher than the other might gain you an inch or so of clearance.
As for the Guide vs. the Saranac, if I had to choose between the two I would go with the Guide simply because it is a three-layer polyethylene hull rather than a single layer thermoformed polyethylene hull. Three-layer, rotomolded polyethylene hulls have a central foam core that adds stiffness and buoyancy so they don't require the hokey plastic seats and central consoles that extend down to the hull to add stiffness. Thus the seats and thwarts can be swapped out or dropped if desired.
But I don't care a whole lot for either boat. The main reason is that both are ungodly heavy. Old Town lists the Guide 160 at 86 lbs but don't be surprised if it actually weighs 90 lbs or more. You may be easily able to military press a 90 lb barbell but you might find that lifting a 90 lb canoe overhead to the top of your Suburban to be a very different matter. Grasping the gunwales of a canoe is not as easy as grasping a barbell, and if you don't have your hands exactly positioned under the center of gravity there will be considerable stress on your wrists. Also, it seems that every time I lift a canoe overhead outdoors the wind comes up.
Three-layer poly boats are also prone to thermal deformation over time. This does not render them unusable but does render them less efficient and attractive.
If you can accommodate a 16 ft tandem your options become much greater. If I were you I would look around for a used Royalex or composite tandem in decent condition in that length range before resorting to a polyethylene canoe. Just watch out for the stern stem height.
Options… …for if the 16’ canoe turns out to be unworkable (although, I think you can make it work).
You didn’t state your weights - at least I don’t notice it anywhere. If you and your paddling partner are trim in build and average of height, and your kid is still small, a 14’ canoe can work for clam waters. We did it with a Wenonah Fisherman. I would recommend that the kid sit on a cushion on the floor to keep his weight low, and hopefully he isn’t too restless.
I would not try it with the Merrimack Osprey (speaking from experience here in the virtually identical Navarro Legacy) or anything shorter. The Osprey is a 13’ flat-bottom canoe with a low freeboard. Two trim adults is it’s practical limit.
Old Town made a 14’ royalex model with Osprey name that would be very similar to the Fisherman and should work about as well.
Both the Fisherman and the OT Osprey are not uncommon on the used market in the $600-$700 range in good condition.
Regardless of what length you ultimately decide on, you will be much happier in a used boat of good design than a new one of poor design or heavier layup at the same price. Patience pays off.