Blue Hole Canoe Information

[Alexamaya1]

Good Day,
I was just gifted a BH canoe from my neighbor, just looking for some information on it!
The serial number is OCA-8781 The other number on the side is- TBH-13441-M84A, if I am in the wrong place please let me know!! Thanks in advance.

[Hatchet_Jack]

They have a good reputation as white water boats from guys who paddle them back in the day.

[pblanc]

It is an OCA model, the first hull that Blue Hole designed and molded in house, a 15’ 9" tandem molded in heavy Royalex. “OCA” simply stands for “open canoe model A”. It was certified (built) in August of 1984.

The OCA was among the very first Royalex canoes suitable for whitewater use and was extremely popular back in the day.

[tketcham]

Hi, Alexamaya1, welcome to Paddling.com.

Check out this post…

Blue Hole OCA Canoe - Royalex?

Yes, it is Royalex. The Blue Hole OCA was one of the first, if not the first, non-aluminum tandem hull that was highly whitewater capable. I have two Blue Hole Royalex boats (solos) from the 1980s that are doing just fine. Blue Holes had a near legendary reputation for durability and were made of fairly heavy Royalex sheet. The boat would be a very capable river canoe. It would be less than ideal for primarily flat water paddling but could perform that role as well as tripping, so long as y…

I owned a Blue Hole OCA for many years and it works fairly well as a tandem whitewater canoe, though there are far better designs nowadays. The OCA can be used as a solo whitewater canoe (it’s what I learned in) and works OK as a flatwater tandem canoe but it has limitations for those uses because of its design. I ended up buying a solo whitewater canoe and a tandem flatwater canoe for that reason.

But for just “messing around in boats” it does the job.

Tom