I lucked into a Guide a few years back, essentially new. I put in a second seat for my young son, and have done quite a bit of tripping with it on rivers… but very slow rivers like White Cliffs of Missouri, etc. On mellow stuff, it seems fine. Anything with boils and strong eddy lines it feels out of control…spinning, veering, sliding, grabbing etc. I’m an ok paddler… nothing like the NE folks on here, but I grew up paddling and have logged quite a few miles. WTF is up with this thing? Seat is factory position… I kneel with rear on seat. I’m 6’2" about 160. Any basic guidance as far as set up, weight etc appreciated. I’ve read many reviews of this boat and it seems obvious it’s me and/or setup or lack of. Aside from a nice small canoe to load on truck that can also carry weight, I haven’t realized any positives. Would kill for a Courier…
I’ve never paddled either a Guide or a Courier, but I have friends that paddle both:
Guide
Courier
There are guys here that have paddled both, so hopefully they will chime in. I have a Yellowstone Solo and a Wildfire that I paddle regularly in moving water, so I am very familiar with that class of 14’ solo boats. Hate to say it, but it doesn’t sound like there is anything wrong with the set up of the boat. It sounds like the paddler needs a little more practice in moving water – maybe even a class if you can find one. Boat lean is very important as you move into faster moving water. Lean the wrong way (or not at all) and the boat might grab, spin or flip. At the very least it will tend to feel unstable.
Courier is a bigger boat, so the response will be a little less dramatic, but good technique is still important.
I’d say don’t give up on the boat. Sounds to me like you need a little more time in the seat, and maybe a little coaching. Paddling in moving water is not intuitive, so taking a class or getting some coaching from someone with experience might help.
If not, sell the Guide and find something that you like.
Does installing a second seat and paddler change the position of the center of gravity of the load in accordance within the limits of the designer’s specifications?
Yes definitely. I was assuming that the son is relatively small, and is not in the boat when he is running moving water. If he is, that could be the problem.
It sounds like your boat is nose heavy. You are light and the boat can take quite a bit of weight so adding your son could make the boat nose heavy and hard to control. In principle you need to sit further back from center to balance the boat. You can do an experiment…sit on a milk crate towards the rear of the boat and see how it handles. If you like it then put a seat or thwart back there. The boat should sit level with you plus your son in it.
I’ve owned and paddled all boats mentioned so far: Guide, Courier, Wildfire, and Yellowstone Solo.
Have paddled Wildfire/Yellowstone Solo & a Guide extensively. Still have both of them, because they are both good boats.
Don’t want to rain on your parade, but it’s not the boat that’s the problem.
If you add an additional seat (where you did), and add the weight of another paddler (even a 50 pound kid), the handling characteristics of the boat is going to change. No way it can NOT change. Will be an issue with a Courier, Wildfire, or Yellowstone Solo too.
You’d most likely be better off respositioning “both” seats, and getting some more moving water seat time, as previsously mentioned. Sounds like you’re bow heavy.
If you think trading the Guide for a Courier, and outfiting it the same way you did the Guide; you’ll have the same issues. You’ll also have a less responsive canoe. Suggest you check out specs on gunwale width on both Guide & Courier.
If you decide to sell the Guide; you probably won’t have to wait to long to sell it.
If you’re anywhere close to Missouri, I might be interested myself.
P.S. All boats mentioned were designed to be used as solos.
Yes, they are somewhat adaptable, but only if correctly outfitted.
BOB
@thebob.com said:
P.S. All boats mentioned were designed to be used as solos.
Yes, they are somewhat adaptable, but only if correctly outfitted.
I’d leave the Guide alone and get a second boat to paddle with your son. He won’t stay young for long, and it really isn’t a boat for two.
Thanks for replies. For clarification, my son is older now and not in the boat with me. So only added weight is the cane seat. I’ve paddled quite a bit in water like the two pics posted above… from what I can see. Standing waves, etc aren’t really an issue per se, it’s more high flow spring run off conditions where currents are chaotic, swirling, boiling, etc. Sorry, my terminology is probably lacking. I feel like a top heavy cork with 98% of it’s mass above water and pivot point under my ass. But even in calmer waters, if I stop paddle input the boat immediately goes sideways, backwards, etc. I’ve experimented a bit with weight, mostly in bow, and more weight helps. Bit of a pita needing to schlep weight whenever you want to use a boat, but maybe you can’t have it all with a solo boat with good carrying capacity, exacerbated by my relative light weight and top heavy build.
Bit more… on a wave train… lets say knee high…bread n butter ‘fun’ stuff no weird approach, obstacles, basic current, straight, I have to paddle/rudder constantly to get through it bow first. the bow is like a wagging compass needle, the boat wanting to be pushed off the side to left or right of every wave front. I’ve done stuff like that in everything from 100lb poly junkers to unloaded kevlar tandem tripping canoes paddled backwards and never had issue.
I do not think the addition of an empty cane seat in the front of the canoe will make much difference. I have seen paddlers with tall, slender, top-heavy builds have significant difficulty with canoes and kayaks that most others found quite stable. So it is possible that you just need a different boat.
Before you go that route, try a couple of things. I have seen quite a few canoes set up factory stock with the seat in a position that made the canoe quite bow light. Measure and mark the longitudinal midline of the canoe with some tape strips on the gunwales. Put the boat in the water or on the ground and kneel in it in your customary paddling position. Now check your position in the canoe relative to the midline. In a slender guy like yourself, your center of gravity will probably be right around the position of your navel, although it could be a little in front of it if your femurs are long. You will probably find the boat easiest to control if your center of gravity is at or close to the longitudinal midline. If your center of gravity is much behind or in front of this point, it may account for your troubles.
See how much clearance you have under the seat for your feet. This will depend on your shoe size and choice of foot wear. You don’t want to compromise your ability to extract your feet quickly, but if you have sufficient clearance, you might consider suspending your seat a bit lower. Even a half-inch can sometimes make a big difference in stability. To do this may require you adding some small spacers to the bottom of your seat hangers and getting some longer machine screws.
Finally, check the position of your knees in the hull. You will have maximum stability if your knees are out in the chines of the boat. You are tall enough that this should not be a problem, but if you don’t already have some, I would consider gluing in some kneeling pads. A minicell pad with a “bolster” at the inside edge will help keep your knees positioned out in the chines if they have a tendency to slide inward.
@Dick Summers said:
Standing waves, etc aren’t really an issue per se, it’s more high flow spring run off conditions where currents are chaotic, swirling, boiling, etc. Sorry, my terminology is probably lacking. I feel like a top heavy cork with 98% of it’s mass above water and pivot point under my ass. But even in calmer waters, if I stop paddle input the boat immediately goes sideways, backwards, etc. I’ve experimented a bit with weight, mostly in bow, and more weight helps.
I can’t say I’m completely sure I understand what you are describing here, but a couple things come to mind which may or may not be on target.
First, in chaotic, swirling currents, most boats will be knocked off the intended heading and need significant correction input from the paddler. Whitewater boats are less affected by such turbulence since the ends are not nearly as “grabby”. Where I get confused is when you say more weight helps. Usually, a light-load situation causes the boat to be less affected by swirling currents for the same reasons that a lightly-loaded boat pivots more easily due to paddler input. This makes me think the currents really aren’t that pushy, but that you benefit from having more inertia or “swing weight” resisting the boat’s tendency to wander suddenly. In that case, I’d suggest that you just need to accept that correcting the boat’s wanderings is part of the deal, and part of the fun.
I paddle a Novacraft Supernova which has similar dimensions and about the same amount of rocker as the Guide, but unlike the Guide, the rocker is progressive from very near center toward each end. In the Guide, the rocker is concentrated within about three feet of each end so most of the center portion of the boat is quite straight-keeled. Even properly trimmed, with a light load (I weigh slightly less than you), the Supernova requires that almost every stroke be tailored, even moment by moment, to what the boat is doing “right now”. Seldom are any two strokes the same, or the boat will suddenly veer. I accept that as an attribute of a highly maneuverable boat. A couple of weeks ago I was paddling alongside a friend in a Guide, and that canoe coasted between strokes in a much more course-constrained fashion, but I still wouldn’t expect it to coast in a straight line for very long or very far. From what you describe about going off course as soon as you stop paddling, I suspect that you might be expecting it to track better than can be expected for this design, or you have too much weight in front of you. Try moving some or all of your load (depending how much there is) more toward the rear. I find it works best to split the total cargo load into one heavy bundle and one light bundle. The heavy bundle goes right behind the seat, close to you, and the lighter bundle goes in front of your knees (and the lighter it is, the farther forward it should go, but try to keep it from being so light that you need to put it all that far in front of you). Since the lighter bundle is farther from center, it can perfectly counterbalance the heavier bundle that’s much closer to center, and the boat ends up being trimmed the same as if there were no extra cargo at all.
Most of the time, it’s a few hour paddle. I’ll have one drybag with not much weight… maybe an additional 15 lbs. My feet are size 12 and frankly are a pita to extract compounded by narrow width of boat. Pblanc, I’ll investigate the seat position thanks. I can tell you I’m polar opposite build compared to guys in pics above.
@Dick Summers said:
Most of the time, it’s a few hour paddle. I’ll have one drybag with not much weight… maybe an additional 15 lbs. My feet are size 12 and frankly are a pita to extract compounded by narrow width of boat. Pblanc, I’ll investigate the seat position thanks. I can tell you I’m polar opposite build compared to guys in pics above.
I’d expect that with that load, you’d want it right behind the seat, and if you have any lighter items (like rain gear, food and water), put that stuff in front of your knees. Can you paddle pretty well in reverse? If so, how does your boat track when paddling backward? If it seems to track as well or better than it does when going forward, that’s a good sign that the boat is trimmed too heavy in front. If it’s more squirrely when paddling backward, that’s pretty normal and your trim is probably not as bow-heavy as I was guessing.
As Pete briefly mentioned, your choice of footwear can make all the difference. I prefer very flexible footwear. Stiffer shoes (this includes river shoes) are not all that amenable to quickly getting your feet out from under the seat.
As far as your weight and body build go, that’s one reason I feel more confident describing how things work for me in a solo canoe, and also why I don’t care for hearing guys that weigh 250 giving blanket advice to guys who don’t have all that built-in baggage (not saying that’s been the case for this thread, but it happens a lot). Most of the paddlers on this site weigh 70 or 80 pounds more than you and I do, and if I even put 40 pounds of gear in a solo canoe, the increased sluggishness and directional inertia of the boat is enormous. None of those guys will ever know how it feels to have their boat freely move around underneath them.
@Dick Summers said:
Most of the time, it’s a few hour paddle. I’ll have one drybag with not much weight… maybe an additional 15 lbs. My feet are size 12 and frankly are a pita to extract compounded by narrow width of boat. Pblanc, I’ll investigate the seat position thanks. I can tell you I’m polar opposite build compared to guys in pics above.
If you are able to tolerate kneeling from a relatively low seat height, the trim seems approximately correct, and you want to try to make the canoe work for you, you could consider removing the seat and substituting a minicell pedestal of the type used by whitewater open boaters. This would allow you to get your center of gravity significantly lower without any foot entrapment issues. A pedestal would pretty much commit you to kneeling all the time but it sounds as if you do that anyway. With your height you could probably use a pedestal with a 6" high seat and still be able to reach over the gunwales easily.
Yeah, fitting various bodies to a canoe is interesting. The reason often given for less beam is difficulty reaching the water to paddle… something not so much of an issue with me with long torso and ‘ape’ factor… I would probably find a wider boat just fine that others wouldn’t, the greater width helping counter my higher cg and lighter weight.
@pblanc said:
Before you go that route, try a couple of things. I have seen quite a few canoes set up factory stock with the seat in a position that made the canoe quite bow light. Measure and mark the longitudinal midline of the canoe with some tape strips on the gunwales. Put the boat in the water or on the ground and kneel in it in your customary paddling position. Now check your position in the canoe relative to the midline. In a slender guy like yourself, your center of gravity will probably be right around the position of your navel, although it could be a little in front of it if your femurs are long. You will probably find the boat easiest to control if your center of gravity is at or close to the longitudinal midline. If your center of gravity is much behind or in front of this point, it may account for your troubles.
I measured as described and my naval center when keeling is about 3.75" behind the boat center. So seated it would farther behind the center.
So your trim is probably a little bow light, but not so much that it should be expected to cause a lot of difficulty with stability or control. Assuming you can get and keep your knees well out in the chines, if you are having trouble controlling this hull, you may indeed benefit from a larger hull. It sounds like you cannot get lower in the boat kneeling with a seat or kneeling thwart. You might try taking out the center seat and fashioning a jury-rig pedestal out of something around 6’" high. If you can tolerate that position and find that the boat is much more stable during a trial paddle, you might consider going with a pedestal.
Yeah if I could snap my fingers and turn this into a Courier, I would. I don’t need increased responsiveness and find it a pita to always need to be on my toes. I’ve always liked beamy boats. Taking the kids to soccer practice in a Ferrari.
But I’d like to sort the trees for the forest and fix what needs fixing whether it be me, the setup or a combo. It’s obvious from reviews/opnions it’s a good boat.
some boats are more stable than others. I Have paddled a courier but not a guide so I can’t compare.
Do know that speed is your friend when crossing “boiling” or “swirling” currents and eddy lines.
When it comes to experience there are lots of different kinds- what’s key is how much time and practice you’ve put in on the environment where you’re having difficulty. If you really have been putting in that time then maybe it is time for a new boat. In a general though, I usually don’t think boat but rather paddler.
Almost all boats naturally want to spin out in strong current so the stern draw and dynamic stern rudder is your friend to counteract the spin.
In really boily stuff or catching stiff eddies high you learn to come in on a brace- in a canoe especially the low brace is your friend.
As the forces get stronger the need to heel the boat (more on edge) becomes more important.
All this stuff takes practice.
@Dick Summers said:
Yeah if I could snap my fingers and turn this into a Courier, I would. I don’t need increased responsiveness and find it a pita to always need to be on my toes. I’ve always liked beamy boats.
Decision made - nothing wrong with that.