I have a Blue Hole Canoe, 17 1/2 feet long that is 27 years old. I have no idea what it is made of. I wish to install a skid plate and I need to know if the hull is kevlar or poly resin. Can anyone help me out?
Your Blue Hole
Is made of ABS materials and was injected into a mold. If you have one hang on to her. I miss that company and their products. It is one tuff boat.
You will be disappointed
if you use polyester or vinylester resin for skidplates. Epoxy is th eonly way to go.
Jim
Wow !
Does that name bring back memories. One that age might have been made by the original company and could be a collectors item. It’s worth checking into. I think they sold out to Dagger in the early 80’s maybe?
I remember when they were the talk of the town on the Nantahala River. I forget the guy’s name but he was giving solo canoe lessons using Blue Hole canoes. How radical! Rockered solo ABS canoes, not aluminum tandems! Soon after Dagger began making several ABS WW models and the rest as they say is history. I was fortunate enough to meet and spend some time with one of the originators, Bob Lantz in Tenn. He’s a great guy and into all types of canoeing.
Rockered?!? I paddled them, and
they had less rocker than my old Tripper. Expectations change…
The original Blue Hole OCA
was based on the “Warsaw Rocket” hull developed by Uniroyal. Can you say FLAT?
Jim
rocker relative over time
I’m not much of a gear-head and tend not to remember those details very well. I think you guys are correct. I asked my wife ( who keeps me straight but was out of town) and the guy we were seeing on the Nanti was Nolan Whitesell. She tells me further that Whitesell had his own designs and can’t figure how I tied him with Blue Hole. There must have been some Blue Holes around there because that’s where I first heard the name. Anyhow it impressed us both to see his solo rockered canoes. We had an alum. tandem Grumman
(rock magnet) and seeing a solo rockered hull was different, and plastic to boot ! The first WW solo hull I attempted was a Dagger (I’m really bad at this but I think an Impulse or Dimension?) It was a barge by today’s standards and not all that rockered although it seemed so at the time. It was a shock to paddle a rockered solo hull and I just went around in circles. That’s how and when I became a student of paddling.