Extremely new to canoeing. Just purchased a Dagger Reflection 15 from a friend for myself and 2 sons. It had been stored outside and the stern cane seat gave way under me about an hour into our first outing. Duct tape saved the day again. I have some really basic newbie questions:
When I solo paddle, should I sit in the center seat, or stern?
I think I would prefer to replace the cane seats with webbed seats. Pricing seems all over the board. Are there one or two reputable sources for seats that you could refer me to?
Because of the center seat, this canoe does not have a carrying yoke. I’d like to add a yoke without sacrificing the center seat. I found one model (Mad River Universal Yoke) but wanted to know if there were more choices out there. Any recommendations?
When I ran the San Juan in Utah, a couple of the other paddlers were using Dagger Reflection 15s rigged for solo paddling. I don’t remember whether those boats had solo thwarts or center seats, but of course for solo use the center seat should be a bit back of the true center. I believe the Reflections were asymmetrical, so they should work best paddled in the “forward” direction rather than sitting backward on the bow seat.
Reflections are very good versatile hulls, but they are sensitive to trim. Try to find where you should sit so the boat is dead level or, at most, just a teensy bit up at the bow.
One guy paddling a Reflection on the San Juan kept getting blown around by our strong headwinds, so finally he gave up and paddled the boat backwards. This worked well enough because the San Juan has a faster current than the Colorado in the Grand Canyon.