Tripper fathering Discovery 169
Glen,
The information i got was from a long time Old Town Rep. The two canoes are not made in the same mold. i should have added a sentence to my post to clarify. The starting point for the Discovery 169 was the dimensions of the Tripper, which they took from the mold. The original Discovery 158 came from the Camper dimensions and the 164 from the Penobscot. Easier to start with a proven design than to draw up something from scratch.
( The Discovery 174 was from scratch since it was destined to be a kit boat to compete with the coleman, and the flared sides and angled stems allowed bare hulls to be nested for shipping.)
The differences in side profile and bow height between the royalex hulls and Disco equivalents were partly marketing and partly economics. Keeping the ends lower kept the weight down. When you are over 80# its time to look at what you can trim off the hull. Even though they went from wood seats to the bulky rotomolded plastic as standard on the Discoveries and added over 5#. The advantages of durability and extra floatation outweighed the weight gain for the livery customers.
Liveries i know that rent Old Towns seem to use a lot more Discoveries than royalex models. If the durability of the Discoveries was low i think the royalex hulls would be used more.
Bill
Okay
Virtually all canoe designs are tweeks of some pre-existing design. All canoe designers do that.
Ogg has characterized himself as a “newbie”, so I just didn’t want to leave the impression that the Discovery and Tripper are clones of each other.