An Old Town Rouge River 14TK
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.
http://www.atkenco.com/store/RR14!JOHNO/Old+Town+Rogue+River+14
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.
There are self store facilities
or canoes that stow in a bag like a PakCanoe. My seventeen footer stows in a bag two feet across by four high.
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.
Two Osperys, two prices
Here are a couple of the wide, short osprey canoes in your price range.
http://www.ricka.org/Classifieds/Classified_ads.html
Peter
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.
You should be OK
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.
height and weight
I am 6’1" and 230 lbs; my son is about 50 lbs and my wife is 5’5" and about 140 lbs. Does that change any of your recommendations?
a bit
In order to put your canoe in proper trim you might need to alter the position of at least the stern seat so that it is not unduly bow light if you and your wife are paddling it alone. This makes it even more important to avoid a canoe in which the seats are fixed in position and cannot be moved or removed, like the OT Saranac.
moving seats
What is an example of an inexpensive tandem canoe where the seats can be moved?
16
If you can go up to 16 ft, your possibilities increase. The MR Explorer 16 is a good family boat. The OT Discovery 158, or better yet the OT Peobscot if you can manage the extra 4 inches.
many examples
You can change the seat positioning in most composite and Royalex canoes, and many three-layer poly ones as well. Changing seat position often requires replacing the seats, however.
Taking the OT Guide 160 as an example, the seats are molded plastic (which I don’t like) but they are not molded to the hull or attached to the hull bottom. They are suspended from the gunwales by stainless steel machine screws. Those seats could be removed from the boat without damaging the hull’s integrity.
But the seats could not be moved fore or aft because of the nature of their construction. Many canoes have wood-framed seats with a cane or webbing seating surface. Replacement seats are readily available from Essex Industries and Ed’s Canoe. A wood framed seat can generally be moved closer to one of the stems by shortening the seat frame cross members. This does require drilling new holes in the gunwales to accommodate the machine screws. A bow seat can often be transferred to the stern because the cross members of the frame of a bow seat are typically longer than those of the stern.
If you have a tandem paddled by two people of rather dramatically different size the boat will generally be way out of trim, either bow light or bow heavy, unless some additional ballast is positioned to adjust the trim. Repositioning one of the seats is a way to avoid the need for adding more weight to the boat for trim.
The solution is to move the heavier paddler toward the center of the boat, the lighter paddler closer to a stem, or both. This balances the canoe in the same way that 2 people of much different size can balance a see-saw. There is usually a limitation as to how much you can move a bow seat toward the front stem because you need to allow room for the bow paddler’s legs. If the stern paddler is larger you have a lot of room to reposition the stern seat forward but you will need to buy a new seat to do so. The cost to do so is typically around $50 give or take if you know where to shop.
Yep.
Your weight and size are a bit above what I call "trim" and "average" (yours - not your wife's), and adding the kid makes a pretty big difference. That would be pushing the limit - and while still manageable, not really enjoyable. It would really be worth the effort to do whatever you can to accommodate a 16' or larger canoe.