TomL - Yeah, love my Shearwater. And it looks like we have the same good taste in canoe colors. I sold my Starship long ago. Used it for many years on trips, but it was not very versatile, definitely a flatwater tripping boat. It was a rocket on flat water, but pretty difficult to turn. Since it was a fiberglass layup it was pretty heavy too (50 pounds).
Me either
After 57 years we communicate better in the canoe than at home
I didn’t say they were a Divorce Boat for me, just that I prefer paddling solo.
Other than that, been happily married for 35 years–Without a canoe having any bearing on the matter.
The wonderful thing about solo canoes is they can be so versatile, even when there’s a theme to the design. Take a fast touring canoe, like the Wenonah Advantage; you can do some serious cruising in that boat and cover a lot of miles in a hurry. But you can also slow down, grab a straight shaft paddle and just meander up a small inlet stream or marshy creek or weave your way through a flooded bottomland. Would a freestyle boat be a better boat for the meandering part of the day? Certainly, it would be a blast. But it would take longer to get back to the takeout and a cold beer. 
Never want to be delayed from the cold beer at completion–I even drink ones with a canoe on the label, just to ease the transition.
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Yes! Solos are versatile and there are so many unique personalities. Freestyle boats make surprisingly good traveling boats (Cliff Jacobsen used a Flashfire at one time). Those Swifts (Shearwater & Osprey) travel better than freestyle boats with their asymmetric hulls and differential rocker but they are also two of my favorites on quiet ponds; the Osprey can be leaned to the gunwale more easily than a Wildfire and if you scoot the sliding seat forward on a Shearwater and shift weight to your knees you can get daylight under at least four feet of the stern and it spins on a dime. I’ve had a 60 pound dog plus a 70 pound kid in my Shearwater and it still cruises efficiently and turns easily. They are also great for napping…just scoot the seat back, lay down and stretch out and relax. So you can rush back to the takeout in your Advantage and I’ll play on the way back. 
Brings back fond memories of my friend doing FS moves on a camping trip in the Okefenokee in his FlashFire.
In the middle of Billy’s Lake he played among a several dozen eyes watching from close by… Heeled to the rail in a sea of gators
There used to be so many fine solo canoes - and quite a few are still available. I sure wish someone would bring back the Mad River Guide/Freedom solo or something very like it. Even a 7/8 scale Prospector would be interesting. Or the Dagger Prophet, for that matter. The Osprey, Shearwater, and the Swift Raven are great solo boats. The Bell Wildfire and Flashfire, Magic and Merlin, ditto. Sawyer Autumn Mist and Summersong. I’d love to have any of them… but alas, I’m full up. No more storage space. Blackhawk Starship, Ariel and a Mad River Flashback are taking up the rack space and I couldn’t part with any of them.
And there are some I haven’t paddled but look interesting - Mad River Courier, Curtis Dragonfly, some of the Mike Galt designs. There would have to be a heck of a resurgence, and a very well sustained resurgence, before the kind of variety of solo canoe designs that was around in the mid1980s-mid90s comes back. I would welcome it, though.
The popularity of pack canoes is an interesting phenomenon but, it should be noted, this isn’t as new an innovation as some seem to think. A new trend, maybe, and not a bad one - but not new. There’s a fine example in the Canoe Museum in Spooner Wi - the Rushton Sairy Gamp (I think that’s how its spelled…). As some here know, I’m sure, though others might not, it was built for a fellow who went by Nessmuk. (He claimed he was the discoverer of the true source of the Mississippi among other things.) Its a straight-up pack canoe. Sit-on-floor seating, double blade paddle, 9’ long, 26" beam, 6" freeboard, cedar strip, and weighed a mere 10 1/2 lbs. And Nessmuck was doing Field and Stream write-ups on it in 1883. What I don’t know is whether Rushton could be thought of as the inventor of the pack canoe or whether there were other earlier examples - birch bark, low freeboard double-bladers, maybe?
I wonder if there will ever be a revival of the purpose built sailing canoe… thinking of old ideas trending back again and Rushton.
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The DragonFly is in production by Colden Canoe as is WildFIre Nomad and FlashFIre, Back in 1998 we were delivering a boat to a fella at a motorcycle shop in North Carolina. Sawyer was out of production… There in the lot of the motorcycle shop was about 25 Autumn Mists all wrapped in yellow shredding wrap. Now I kick myself for not getting one as the trailer had an empty spot!
Regionally pack canoes have been around the Adirondacks forever. But usually home built and lapstrake designs. Not till Hornbeck started building then others followed did this “new:” old boat design take off.
I’m a big fan of Blackhawk canoes and have owned quite a few over the years. A long time ago a Zephyr was my “go to” solo and every other canoe I tried felt seriously sluggish. Zephyr is very low volume. I know a guy with three Zephyrs including one with birdseye maple trim that may never have been paddled…I think he has 40+ canoes (he’s a hoarder), I’d be very interested in picking up a Summersong some time. I think that’s quite a special boat. One popped up not long ago at a great price ($300) and I wanted to buy it but I had just bought a somewhat rare Blackhawk Shadow SS Special and my wife wasn’t happy about me buying another canoe so soon. The Blackhawk (pic) has since been passed along to someone that will use it more than me. You have to love mahogany outwales and fitted thwarts and carry handles on a boat that was part of an economy line of canoes.
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This discussion of light weight and compactness is starting to sound a lot like the ultra lightweight backpackers. There is a practical limit to how light you want to go in a canoe. Length equals speed. It is not always easy for solo paddlers to keep up with tandem boats with two paddlers. I would not want to be hampered still by some short stubby pack canoe.
Actually the length being faster is not always true. Theoretical hull speed makes the assumption that a paddler has no lack of horsepower. But in reality too long a boat has too much skin friction for a paddler to overcome with power. That is why there are various sizes of solo canoes for various power levels.
The backpacking part of light is sure: Algonquin is a hiking park with a canoe problem and it is not alone. Do the 5390 meter portage from Bonfield to Dixon and you will see light is right.
Block coefficient in solo canoes aids tracking too and it is not hard to keep up with a non racing tandem team with a 15 foot solo canoe that is 25 inches wide at the waterline. And the Shadow from Placid Boatworks regularly out races kayaks in the ADK 90 miler. It is a pack canoe… The Falcon is another one from Savage River. Hardly short and stubby
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Yep there are a lot of factors and that’s part of the fun. When I bought my stubby 13’ Flashfire I was told that won had recently won a local race. My Blackhawk Zephyr could easily outrun a 2 foot longer Swift Shearwater…one could actually punch through the speed/resistance curve “wall”. The Blackhawk Shadow 13 is similar, it’s faster than it should be. I’ve got 15 footers that are more than 25 in wide at waterline and it takes experienced paddlers in a sporty tandem (not just any tandem) to make me not have to slow down to let tandems keep up. Gotta be careful with generalizations.
I am not talking about racing and neither is anyone else.
I have a friend who paddles a beautiful Burgundy Blackhawk Zephyr and another with a lavender one. They’re really sweet boats. I had a chance to get the lavender one, but I think its really better suited for someone who is smaller than I am - especially if carrying gear is something that I might want to do with it. ( Also true of the Bell Flashfire and Mad River Ladyslipper, IMHO) The gal who owns the burgundy one I believe could be a competitive freestyle paddler with it. She used to amaze me - she’d land it on a steep shore by turning 90deg between waves, letting a wave lift her on to shore and set her down, and then step out and haul it up before the next wave came in. Takes a very good paddler in a nimble boat to pull that one off.
I’m not a racer nor am I especially interested in becoming one. I have, however, raced the Ariel in the Callie Rohr race to support a friend who holds that race. Its a 26 miler (or something close to that) on a very twisty upstream bit of the Wisconsin River. I had thought of taking the Starship for that because I do believe it has a better top speed, but I thought the Ariel’s turning ability would be better suited to that particular course. I was wrong.
Push those adventure series Blackhawks past their hull speed and the stern hunkers down and throws a wake that is hard to believe… takes a LOT of strength to push up a wake that large for 20 some miles. And after expending all that energy pushing a wake to pass other paddlers it all gets thrown away when someone ahead of you screws up and gets stuck crosswise in a twisty turn. Everyone you passed catches up and you have to do it all over again - until you can’t. A longer sprinter boat would have been better at out accelerating the gathered hoards even if some speed was lost in the turns. The adventure series Blackhawks, I believe are simply superlative cruisers and you can out last most other solo canoes if you can just cruise at hull speed and the course is long enough, though. That last little bit of speed costs a LOT of energy. (I did, BTW, win it once in a Bell Mystic with a bow paddler who could have out-worked a small Evenrude.)
I agree with ppine about how light a person wants to go - unless acceleration or portaging is what its all about for you. That’s another thing I liked about Blackhawk. While most other builders would use the strength of kevlar to make their kevlar models much lighter, Blackhawk made theirs a little lighter and much stronger. A wiser choice for me and many other paddler, I believe.
Fun comments. My comments about Zephyr and Shadow 13 were just about my perception of their unique characteristics in a sprint. I had an Ariel at one time and it always seemed to me like it wanted a load in it’s tummy; I liked it better with my black lab on board than empty. The front thwart was pretty far rearward so it limited her space and mobility but put the weight in an ideal place. My Combi 15.8 is the only Kevlar Blackhawk I’ve owned and it’s not light but I imagine that it’s the most bulletproof canoe I’ve owned since it seems to have many layers of fabric. I remember hearing that someone had bought the Blackhawk molds maybe 5+ years ago and I think they were on Facebook briefly but then nothing happened.
Its complicated. FreeStyle boats require fast acceleration. This involves less skin surface and hence shorter boats. You want to get to hull speed in three strokes max. Now over distance you may lose that advantage and its kind of not worth studying…except for my friend who writes the Science of Paddling.
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TomL, I’ve heard such rumors about the molds as well - one about a guy in St. Louis buying the molds and another about a guy buying up Blackhawks to make new molds from them. I’ve even heard about a large herd of shiny new Blackhawks being seen on the Current River. I’d love it to be true but for now, anecdotal evidence, I’d say. If any of these folks are actually out there, I sure wish they’d get down to it and start producing some.
I’ve heard similar talk about Saywer solos also. I’ll believe it when I see it.
BTW, I hadn’t thought about that race in years, thanks for reminding me. I recall on several occasions, while I was pushing that wake, seeing a group of cedar waxwings, maybe an otter, and a little side channel that led to… what, a sphagnum bog maybe, pitcher plants?.. and then the phrase “note to self: It’s a race” would leap to mind and the moment was gone.
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Seen what those gators can do…I’d been traveling like I heard banjos!
TomL,
RE: Shearwater “…just scoot the seat back, lay down and stretch out and relax.”
I do something similar with the sliding tractor seat in the Advantage. I’ve almost fallen asleep while resting in the shade of overhanging cedars on a warm day. As for leaning it to the gunwale; not gonna happen on purpose. 
The most versatile boat I paddle is probably my Hemlock Kestrel. At one time I thought that if I had to keep just one boat it would be the Advantage but as I get older I’m realizing the Kestrel is the better boat for versatility. I’d miss the all out speed of the Advantage but the Kestrel moves right along with a bent shaft paddle. Plus, you can heel the Kestrel to the gunwale and have a bit of fun spinning the boat around.
Most solo canoes are a lot of fun to paddle if used in the element they were intended for.
spiritboat, All Day IPA is one of my summer staples. 
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