I picked up this 17’ Alumacraft light weight canoe recently and I’m trying to figure out what year model it is but the last 4 digit date code in the HIN doesn’t fit the format of any of the online info I have found. Does anyone have any insight?
Also, the NMMA decal shows it as a 3 person/455lbs capacity but all the other Alumacraft QT-17CL canoes I’ve found are rated for 4 person/710lbs. The old online brochures on Alumacrafts website all show this model as a 4 person/710lbs canoe also. Did mine get the wrong sticker?
Sorry, forgot to add pictures of the HIN.
In the end, none of this stuff matters, unless you need seats for three or four people (there should be no confusion about that), and in terms of weight capacity, not unless you are able to determine the that width of your canoe is different from that of the other similar models you mentioned (and I think that’s unlikely). Weight ratings for canoes are not magic numbers, and they actually don’t mean a lot unless you understand the context. The weight rating normally lists a particular weight that settles the canoe to some depth into the water that some person somewhere decided is a cutoff between a safe and unsafe condition. That sounds like it means something, but in fact, canoes that are virtually identical can have very different weight ratings, depending on the specifications chosen on which to base the rating. For your own purposes, a safe rating will depend on the water conditions in which you are paddling the boat, how much of the load is gear and how much is people (in practical terms a canoe can carry a bigger load of gear than it can of people), and the skill of the paddlers (the better your paddling skills, the better you will be able to handle a heavily-loaded canoe, but the less likely you will be to load the boat that heavily in the first place).
By the way, that’s an awesome vehicle!
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