Sorry to jump in late, I was away from home…
But there are a couple other folks on the board here who are also into those large canoes.
Check out yknpaddler’s photos on both the “pretty pictures” and “boats on cars” threads. They’re about 10 posts down on both threads.
I think DarkStar may also paddle such boats.
A friend of mine who runs a small shop here in Wisconsin has a couple, but his are wood/canvas and one, I think, needs recanvasing. I believe they come in at around 400 lbs.
Here’s a shot from years ago of one loaded to take the few blocks from one of his old shops to a newer shop.
I’ve seen a couple such boats on the river where I normally paddle. They’re owned by the DNR and are used to take Audubon Society and other such groups out for day trips. They’re fiberglass and, I’m sure, quite heavy. - Odd thing though… they’re painted to try to look like birch bark canoes except birch bark has a white side and a tan side. A real birch bark has the tan side out and the white side in. They painted the “bark” on these inside out.
I Emailed Blue Mountain Outfitters that you praised them on Paddle.com and a “Sarah Dropkin” said you were a good friend and would be welcomed back anytime.
mjac - If you’re interested in hull design and efficiency, (and probably more than is needed or wanted for a recreational paddler such as most of us are) you might want to check out “The Shape of the Canoe” by John Winters. It used to be accessible by a link through Green Valley Boat works and still my be, but I can’t seem to locate it anymore. Otherwise it can be purchased as a download.
I don’t know if you guys check in on the Olympic canoe/kayak events, but if you want to see the product of a whole bunch of thought and training lasar-focused on hull speed and paddling efficiency, the Olympic competition is a thing to behold. Its kind of interesting to me that the boats they use aren’t as long as one might suppose given the relationship between hull speed and waterline length. They are noticeably shorter than single rowing shells, for instance. I think that as a boat gets longer the wetted area, where all the drag occurs, increases and reaches a point where no human can push it hard enough to wring the full potential out of it. Of course width can be cut, and that would help decrease wetted area a little, but the thing still has to be wide enough to hold a person. That, of course, makes them tippy and I’ve often wondered how they would take a wave. The big boats canoes can overcome a lot by adding more horsepower in the form of adding more paddlers.
If you’ve not followed the sprint canoes in the olympics - and lots of very good paddlers haven’t - I’ll put up a sample that you might find interesting…
It looks like they barely use their arms - its all back and torso. And those skinny things would send me a’swimmin’ immediately.
Of course, I am in a boat and would want to know what controls boat speed but right now I would at least like to be able to understand what people mean when they say max speed when length of bow wave matches the length of the boat, falling into the trough, stern wave affects, etc.
Thinking of this in the simplest possible terms, picture how the boat is needing to go “uphill” to climb out of the trough between two waves. Also, realize that the longer the wavelength, the faster the waves travel. Thus a long boat that is trapped between two wave crests of its own creation has the potential to go faster than a shorter boat doing the same, because the waves that the boat generated are traveling faster.
This effect of gravity on the boat when dealing with waves becomes obvious in many ordinary situations. Any whitewater paddler knows that you can surf against a very fast current on the leading face of a standing wave that’s just 8 or 10 inches high. Anyone with experience in very small motorboats has experienced this too. Decades ago, my dad and I used to go fishing in a 12-foot rowboat powered by a 5-horsepower outboard motor which I think was a bit anemic. That boat seemed to be “fast” when up on plane on calm water, but when going downwind on a choppy day, it would bog down when between two waves so that it would take close to thirty seconds to climb over the wave that was in front (these were not big waves at all, usually small enough that whitecaps were few and scattered, so maybe the waves were about a foot high). Once reaching the peak of that wave, for a few seconds the boat would go a whole lot faster going down the leading edge of that wave before doing the whole “climb-the-hill struggle” all over again. In traveling downwind at full power for 10 minutes, that boat would only overtake about 20 waves, meaning that it was barely going faster than the waves were, which was MUCH slower than its travel speed on calm water. Human-powered boats struggle much harder than that in attempting to climb out from between the two waves that they produce when going at hull speed because their power is so much less.
Taking the level of complexity up a notch, boats that are very sleek are “not as strongly trapped” between the waves that they generate, so hull speed becomes a weaker barrier, one that is more forgiving than what’s the case for a beamy boat. The result is that the “limited power” of a paddler can be enough to exceed that hull speed by a small amount.
Regarding sleekness reducing the limitations of hull speed, one point just made by PJC isn’t quite accurate. Making the boat extremely sleek makes it faster but not because the wetted surface area is decreased. Making the boat sleeker actually increases the wetted surface area. For two boats having the same total weight (boat + paddler) and therefore the same volume of displacement, a very sleek boat has a larger area of wetted surface than does a beamy boat. This is easy to envision if one can picture why a sphere has the smallest-possible ratio of surface area to volume of any shape, and that this ratio is enormously higher for an object that’s shaped like a needle. PJC’s point about needing to compromise between the various factors affecting speed for a given type of specialization is why this stuff ultimately gets so complicated!
Well,as the saying goes " Different strokes…" Fors some it’s about the social interaction. For others it’s for the scenery, wildlife and quiet ride. For others like yourself, which seems to be more about athleticism, which is great for you.
The great thing is it can be different things for different people. I did try the social aspect, but haven’t found anyone who want to do more than socialize. We had great group dynamics in my son’s scout troop for a while, but unfortunately that didn’t last. I think syrong group dynamics are hard to find, nurture, and maintain, so keep at ot as long as you can when you find that spark.
My group days are past, and I just need to get out more to enjoy the mechanical part of paddling. I never get tired of swinging the paddle. Rather than feel taxed at the end of each trip, I feel a bit let down. I prefer to socialize by stopping at a waterfront restaurant to unwind.
What intrugues me is that I managrd to achieve the conditioning I enjoyed 10 years ago and managed to do that with a busted left shoulder. I’m still managing to improve slightly with each trip, so there’s curiousitt to see how much I can improve if I find time to go out every three days instead of once every one or two weeks. I think more curiousity than athleticism.
The only thing I know about Paddling a Canoe, is White Water Solo Paddling. Not for speed, but for maneuverability.
I can show you how to take a 22 ft waterfall. Hit the pool at the bottom like a lawn dart and bob back up due to all the flotation. while somehow managing to stay in it and then how to paddle it while floating it’s like a German surfaced U-boat until you get a chance to beach it and dump the water.
Obviously they were not fast canoes. Very maneuverable but not fast. I then transitioned to C1, Whitewater and finally 3m kayak I still have my Dancer, I’m too large for it now, but I can think about the glory days on the Ocoee and Yak.
But I got nothing to teach about Canoe. I can make em go straight or Pivot, but my knees are no longer up to the task of kneeling in them.
Absolutely.
And it can be different things for the same person on different days or stages of life.
Even in the course of a single day - one can paddle with a group and be sociable for a while, be “athletic” for a while and get ahead of the group, enough so that you have a chance to see the deer, bear, otters, etc. before the wildlife is aware of the group. Or one can drop back between the clumps of paddlers that tend to form and just laze through a beautiful day, enjoying the scenery, clouds, maybe play a small standing wave or two, or practice strokes as if learning freestyle paddling.
I recall on one of our very early Ozark paddles seeing WildernessWeb come drifting through a little riffle paddling sweep, feet up on the deck of the yak he was paddling that day, smoking a stogy, casting for smallies with a smile on his face that could light up all of the great outdoors. A man following his bliss…
A group paddle, well sure, but nobody’s tied to perpetual engagement with the group.
I feel your pain. The knees are still wanky because I haven’t gotten them replaced but I did get the hips done. I have a tandem canoe and would like to get that out again on some mild stuff where I don’t have to kneel. Mostly though I kayak. I have been scaling the whitewater back, because the roll is getting harder to hit and I’m getting more risk adverse. I never did get into running waterfalls, chattooga is about as steep as I went. I did manage to get over 500 runs on the new river gorge and somewhere around 150 on the gauley. I never really got comfortable video boating (paddling alone) on the upper gauley but I did it for a few seasons. Pillow was my nemesis and I would flip a lot at the corner of inertia hole (my off side in a c1). Today’s young paddlers are way more skilled than I ever was but I sure had some fun.
Reading the posts about the aluminum canoes. The good old days were drift paddling the 17 ft aluminum Smoker Craft with keel, down the local Gunpowder River during spring flow. It would drag over rocks but was rock solid and steady on the lakes. My brother said he paid $98 for it. After it wrapped around a tree, they bought a Coleman plastic canoe with the aluminum center brace. I still prefer the solitude of the water.
