This all sounds promising and I really hope it works out well for you. Years ago when I was active on the forum which pre-dates this one (I re-joined the current forum after several years being away from it), I took quite an interest in encouraging newbie canoe paddlers and especially solo paddlers to make a real effort to learn traditional paddling skills, and to find out if this type of paddling suited them. I can promise you that learning to solo-paddle a canoe and do it “well” is going to be much harder than you are already guessing, but for a lot of people, the rewards are well worth it and even the effort spent in learning to do more than just “get from here to there without too much wig-wagging” turns out to be enjoyable too (even if for the first several outings it probably won’t be). You seem to project an attitude of someone who could enjoy this learning process and “becoming a good paddler”, and I’ll forgive you for considering the double-blade paddle for cheating at times (I used that method during my first full year of solo paddling, and I fell back on that “crutch” when necessary during the first part of my second year of learning).
What do I mean by traditional paddling? Naturally this includes using a traditional paddle, but it also involves learning a variety of different ways to use the paddle so that besides just going straight, turning, and stopping, you can make the boat pivot (or spin all the way around), go sideways, or diagonally, and to be able to do all these things without switching paddling sides (though it’s okay to switch sides, every maneuver can be done without switching sides). And in current, you can use pivots and various sideways movements while moving the boat in the opposite direction of the current to some degree (either while the boat is going forward or backward through the water) to do much more controlled maneuvers around obstructions (or just to move to more advantageous parts of the river more efficiently), with more finesse and using less physical space (that last one is a biggie when you need to make a maneuver “before you hit that rock” or “to keep from getting sideways to the current in a bad place” (turning to adjust your route but without ever changing the heading of the boat away from its straight-ahead orientation, which makes you fit through tight spots nicely). Another aspect of traditional paddling is to paddle from a kneeling position, and trust me, that’s far more comfortable than it sounds, since your body weight is shared between your knees and your butt, and you will of course put some kind of padding on the floor for you knees (you can buy pads made especially for this, or you can improvise). If your body isn’t badly deteriorated in some way, you will find that kneeling is a really comfortable position (probably more so than sitting), though you will need to straighten out your legs every so often for continued comfort (I commonly kneel without any rest breaks at all for as much as three hours when I’m fishing from a canoe, but I usually straighten one leg at a time for a little while, about every half hour to hour when paddling on a trip). Kneeling vastly increases your control of the boat by giving your a lot more “connected-ness” so that you can feel what’s going on, and also so you can apply much more power when needed (if just sitting on the seat, a lot of strokes will make you slip around if you try to do them strongly), and of course by completely eliminating the tendency of the boat to wobble beneath you (and one result of that last aspect is that you can deliberately lean the boat with great control).
You already have chosen a very good boat for traditional paddling. While you are waiting for your boat, consider buying a good book (or two) on paddling skills. I like one particular book that’s quite old: “Path of the Paddle” by Bill Mason. It illustrates a bunch of different canoe skills in a very clear and concise way. His book, “Song of the Paddle” is fun reading too, on the subject of camping and river tripping. I suppose shipping a North American book to Australia will cause the price to increase a lot, but maybe you’ll consider it.
And be sure to check the FREE advice from Bill Mason on YouTube. He made some nice instructional movies decades ago (in those days, they really were only available as movie film on reels, so yes, they originally were sold as movies!) and these are all available on YouTube. You can order them as modern videos too, but since they are on YouTube there’s not much need. Look for videos on basic solo paddling and basic solo maneuvering in whitewater, but similar topics on “doubles” (paddling tandem with a partner) are really useful too, just for reinforcing basic concepts. Many of the whitwater skills that Bill Mason teaches are ignored by modern whitewater paddlers because modern, whitewater-specific canoes are able to do things that traditional canoes can’t. But it’s good to learn these “old ways” because these same skills are actually highly useful on rivers even in flat water, such as when maneuvering in current where there are fallen trees or sharp bends, or shoals and the like, or even just when launching and landing your boat in zones of swift current where any average paddler would be totally flummoxed, but where you will do it with ease. And if you study ahead of time, you won’t be nearly as confused by the seemingly inexplicable stuff your boat does while you are going around the bends on small rivers.
One more thing on the subject of videos by Bill Mason. If you’re just in the mood to fall more in love with the idea of doing trips by canoe, watch “Waterwalker”.
I also recommend looking at books or videos made in more modern times, particularly since Bill Mason never really verbalized the advantages of keeping the paddle shaft quite vertical with the blade close alongside the boat (as seen from the front or rear) during basic paddling strokes, though he surely knew this. Keeping that bit of “form” in mind during your learning process will make you a better paddler, which of course means you will make your boat behave better. The book, “Paddle Your Own Canoe” by Gary and Joanie Mcguffin is a good example of a more modern approach to teaching traditional paddling.
I hope (and recommend) that you ordered your boat with a solo seating configuration. If the boat is pre-ordered with two seats, it might not be too late to alter the order since they might not have finished building it yet. Otherwise you can easily remove them and install a single seat, just slightly behind center, likely with the front edge of the new seat at the same location as the rear thwart so you can keep the carry thwart where it is, and with a new thwart added immediately behind the new seat. Even better would be to put the front edge of the new seat even closer to center, and build a new thwart farther forward than the existing carry thwart (you can portage the boat using the front edge of the seat, or use a clamp-on yoke for long portages). Of course you can leave the tandem seats where they are and paddle the boat backward from the front seat, though that’s least desirable if wanting the best control. Regardless of how you decide to arrange the seating, if you want to try kneeling, it will help enormously to customize the seat hangers to give the seat an inch or two of forward slope, and to raise the height a bit if necessary so your feet can slide underneath it easily. With wooden seat hangers, you can easily build the hangers you need and save the originals so you can switch it back to the original level seat arrangement if you wish. This boat is definitely going to be a little bit “squirrelly” in its handling, compared to most bargain canoes, lake canoes, and certainly compared to most kayaks of similar length. Yes, this will make things more frustrating in the very beginning but the good news is that your boat will constantly encourage you to learn good habits, and with good habits, making the boat behave flawlessly will eventually become second nature.
That was a ton of advice that you didn’t ask anyone for, but as I said, there are clues in your posts which make me think you might be interested in hearing this kind of stuff.
And just as an aside, it seems that the “olive” color is not yet on the Esquif website so I haven’t seen it, but a few years ago I bought a 16-foot Prospector from Nova Craft in that color. I had intended to get it in traditional green, but when I went to buy the boat at a local boat show (to avoid waiting months for a special order), and I saw that their only example of the boat I wanted had the olive color, I realized I liked that even more than green. Everywhere I’ve taken that canoe, paddling enthusiasts comment on how much they like that color. It’s a new color as canoes go, and yet it seems like it should have been one of the traditional colors all along.
), Esquiff and some Wenonah canoes, and I’m headed down there in the new year to try a few (hopefully bringing one home with me 
). So I was hoping someone out there might help point me in the right direction:
, and (don’t judge me) I’d like the option of being able to swap to a double bladed paddle when confronted with strong headwinds or need to make rapid progress.
