This canoe showed up in Craigslist a while back:
I know nothing about cedar strip canoes except that they should be lined with fiberglass inside and out. Owner says it is. What else do I need to know? How does one tell a working canoe from a wall hanger? The owner is ready to cut the price and make a deal.
Looks nice, there’s some discoloration around the screws on gunwales, but that’s to be expected in a 28 year old boat. I would want to know the actual weight before falling in love from a distance…
The boat is only a little over an hour away so not a great expenditure in time and effort for me to check it out. Assuming the gunwales withstand a poke with a sharp not here and there, not showing signs of rot, would that just mean periodic sanding and a couple coats of polyurethane?
The LnR sticker threw me off. Apparently this is a Great Canadian model Coaticook. As I understand it, Great Canadian was a Massachusetts-based company that did not manufacture canoes but sold canoes made by various companies in Canada. Seems like many of their fiberglass models were heavy chopper gun monstrosities. It’s possible they sold some well-designed, well-made cedar strip models…or maybe not. Can anyone corroborate or clarify?