Drove to SC this weekend to pick up my wife’s new boat. The classifieds in that town had this kayak for sale, so I went to check it out, too. I’ve been looking for an old Phoenix touring boat in need of a home. Well, it wasn’t a phoenix. But the seller practically begged me to take it away.
http://boats.smartcarguide.com/listing/48283704/
Not my boat, btw. But after hours searching the web I found this fiberglass kayak like the one I have. Mine needs work, but has the odd flutings along the foredeck that I assume allowed for built-in thigh braces at the coaming.
It is just short of fourteen feet in length.
So, it was once sold under the Old Town moniker. When, anyone? What is it?
I found a few vintage photos of 70s WW kayaking on the web as well, and there were two pics of what looked like the same boat.
I suspect Old Town sold the boat under their moniker, but it originated somewhere else. Anyone have an idea of the model?
It might be an old Lettman or Prijon
made by “Hyperform” or HIPP. I didn’t know they ever built for Old Town. OT did make some ww kayaks out of Oltonar, Royalex, but they were heavy and unhandy. But OT made a lot of FG boats and they were capable of making FG kayaks without needing an outside agent.
The deck flutings are to stiffen the decks. Those old cockpits were kind of small and weren’t tipped much, so make sure that wet-exiting is easy enough for wnoever ends up as the paddler.
Success! Thanks!
With some more research I found a 1979 Old Town advertisement announcing the Lettman/Prijon collaboration. But, an ebay post for an old prijon 420, with pics of the brochure from that period, leads me to believe this is a Lettman Alpin. Length, width and weight is spot-on. 13’3", 24.5" wide, 42 pounds.
Thanks for the lead!
For some reason, the previously (deceased, apparently) owner had removed and reattached the coaming about a half-inch higher than intended.
I’m going to cut that out, clean up the cockpit rim and the entire hull, figure out a way to make a new coaming/hanging seat combo, install some Yakima foot braces (missing one, but thankfully I have a pair left over from a WW canoe pedestal seat) and paint the thing.
Maybe the Alpin was updated from time to
time. A guy I knew in '76-‘77 paddled an Alpin, and it did not have deck fluting like yours. Plus, it was shorter than 13’ and blunter at the front end. Sort of a first try at a heavy water and creek boat.
Making a new rim and seat combo is
a very ambitious and rather difficult project. If you can get in the boat with the existing rim and seat, I would not mess with it. I’ve done a rim, using the Tygon tube method, but I would not do a seat unless I had a mold. In my case, I did a foam seat, with foam bolsters strapped into the sides of the boat, an old Noah Lava/Magma I converted from its c-1 version to a kayak version with a long Prijon cockpit.