Think I need two
Yeah Yeah two bikini clad girlballasts so’s I can trim her out.
The boat! Fer cryin out loud THE BOAT!
Don’t tell the wife, She don’t vipe.
Tommy
THANKS!
Sometimes I despair at the idle chit chat around here.
But not today.
You all have provided me with a wealth of experience and advice I wouldn’t know where to find elsewhere.
It’s the only reason I keep coming back.
So Thank you all!
Tommy
Windfall of Voyager Info
Thanks, Tommy, for threading this needle, and for all those putting a stitch in my time to learn much concerning this, to me, at least, fast, fun and challenging canoe!
I’ve had my Voyager, a used Flexcore Kevlar model I took on leasehold from friend Joel about 2-1/2, maybe near three years ago. I remember DuluthMoose, whom I’ve met at Raystown with his wife Ginny, offering me the same sagely comments he brought here, regarding wind and trim. Two years now and I’d have thought I had it down. I think I’ve come close, in regards to “pegging” down those stems with just a light touch, per loading a dry/airbag in the bow (the 60L WXtex bag with a purge valve I use, holding 20 to 30 lbs. of clothing and misc. stuff, and which I semi-inflate through the purge, thus giving some additional buoyancy should I come to sadly clinging or pushing along a swamped canoe), and a small cooler and extra paddle and “handy” gear drybag about 2-1/2 to 3 feet aft of me adding about 15-pounds. But often I still find I’ve put a stern or bow stem perhaps a tad too tight into the water. Then, with just my additional 220-pound bulk aboard, a sudden zephyr of 20+ knot intensity quartering in from the bow will often have the snoot sniffin’ into the wind, unless I’m quick enough to twitch a lean, both rearwards and to lee, lightening and freeing that lengthy forward knife edge to come back on course with a subtle onside semi-sweep or j-stroke correction. Every now and then, though, she’ll grab that weather-and-half-cocked line like a rail, and only through a series of unorthodox paddle gesticulations coupled with my slanderous diatribes, not likely to offend anyone since they’re being forcefed back down my gullet by a non-plus, non-compliant wind, I slowly achieve a semblance of original course. I try to keep bow rudders to leeward down to a minimum, because I short hate cheating myself of all that lovely speed-n-glide the big V seems to give you so nicely. But, sometimes I’ve got to gesticulate those in, too.
Now, adding my 58-pound canine associate, Moby, to the equation - and God knows how you other folks have the temerity to put a four-pawed twithcher out-of-sight behind you, there to anxiously look over your shoulder as their lengthy probiscus and a.c. system of a tongue surrenders up the drool onto your shoulder - right in front of me so that he has a tad more room to turn 180, and so that I can herd him with my thighs and knees onto an even keel, the Voyager seems to sit rather nicely, though I now slide my aft gear slightly further sternward. Let’s see, that’s 220 + 58 + 30 + mmmmmmmm, maybe 20 pounds more, so, yup, I’m comin’ up a tad closer to that 340-pound figure of the Mooses’.
Anyway, twice now I’ve had the boat, sans the ballast shifter canine, easily loaded with paddler and cargo into the 400+ pound area, on trips to Assateague Seashore backcountry. And wouldn’t you know, pleasantly, those notorious seaside winds never got over an occasional 25-knot puff. So, my paddles there were quite relaxing. In fact, so much so that I, along with my friend Brian, also in a lightweight Kevlar Voyager, overshot are intended camping destination by several miles as we glided easily along. Poor DougD. He should have known better than to follow us in that, “tubby,” Royalex Explorer McCrea leant him. Doug kept mutterin’ somethin’ ‘bout, “@#$*'in rice-rockets!”
On those Assategue voyages, should the winds have gotten nasty, and what with the tides often starving the guts and sloughs for water over those sandbars and clam shells and crab pots, so much so that getting more than 6" of your single blade wet can be a challenge, I had, as Dave allued, a double blade along. Brian paddles most of the time in his Voyager with a 230 or 240-cm model he made himself, and he scoots that baby along a bit quicker than I can, hit-n-switchin’ with my Mitchell Leader (double-bend shaft).
Anyway, even when I’m out on the reservoir/lake without Moby to add barking ballast, gusty days can be a challenge, but I’m finding that bringing along a filled Kelty 10-litre water sack, which lies nicely in the bilge conforming to the hull shape, and which I can either push forward to bow or pull towards me by putting my foot in the loop handle, seems to give me some needed weight to noodle-n-negotiate as I get better with nuance.
Still, Tommy, those crossings of powerful eddy and tide line make me nervous, having witnessed c2g, a very capable paddler in my estimation, have a not-so-bon-Voy-ager moment once in the past, crossing out from behind a boulder eddy into an 8 MPH, likely, jet of Susquehanna current. Damn but Dave’s good at swimming a waterlogged boat, though! And one time, playing with my Voyager trying to pierce and surf waves on the Pocomoke River when they were holding a wakeboard competition (those weighted transoms of the pull boats were easily making 4-foot, trough-to-crest, moving waves, it was a bit tractor-seat unsettling to watch a wall of water roll back over the deckplate. She, through no particular skill of my own, pierced on through, though.
I, not that competant a paddler, will likely never have a mastery of this boat, as it is for me with any other hull. Never enough time to get out there on the water and learn. And the mighty wind shall likely rule me anytime it chooses to kick up its heels over my head. But darn, I’m having fun each time I get a chance to push a paddle in her!
Paddlingpika! Thanks for that wonderful write-up with pics on your homemade cover! The PVC clips are ingenious! I believe, using an old and extra Eureka nylon tent fly I have, I shall attempt your design. Think I’ll try to use some old vinyl siding strips I have to make some arches/Conestoga wagon-like hoops, and perhaps sewing some half-sleeves, insert these stays through the sleeves, anchoring their ends which I’ll tenon into those same pockets where the pipe-clips go. I think the rounded clips, with the stays from tenon-to-tenon being slightly longer than the direct gunnel-to-gunnel width, will flex upwards the stays and cover into enough semi-arc to spill rain and splashes to the sides.
TW
Barking ballast
– Last Updated: Jun-11-09 9:44 AM EST –
TW,
Anyone who has met Moby can really appreciate the phrase "barking ballast". This brings up the eternal question: Can you keep your barking ballast still?
Maybe Mike McCray could rig a pulley system that will allow you to move the barking ballast fore and aft to trim your canoe. Then again, the persistent Moby would surely defeat any such system.
Dave
I have always thought chunks of dried
wood would make good ballast.Won’t take you down if you capsize and ready made fuel when you get there.
voyageur in wind
I own a voyageur for 5 years.Most of the time day trip.Just love that canoe.I never load it more than 30 pound on day trip all the weight in back and seat all the way back it handle back wind very well,no weight in the front.on side wind do not try to keep it parallel to the wind, instead angle it up wind.take the time to learn paddling this canoe you wont regret it.