On Oct 16, 4:55 am, Ken Fortenberry
wrote:
riverman wrote:
Ken Fortenberry wrote:
I agree with everything except the 17' length. A 17' tandem
is more canoe than I care to paddle solo, I wouldn't buy a
tandem canoe much over 16' for solo paddling/fishing. ...

Yeah, I agree that there's some discussion on the 16' vs 17' length to
be had. I find a 16' boat a tad on the crowded side for tandem
tripping,

It depends on the size of the paddlers and the boat I guess.
My bow man (wife ;-), is 5'7" 135 lbs., Kipper the Hound is
70 lbs. and I'm 5'11" 220ish, we all fit into my Navigator 16
with room for a weekend's worth of gear. Anything longer than
a couple of days we paddle an 18'6" Wenonah Odyssey.

We'd be good paddling partners. I'm 6'3" and 235, but I have varying
bow paddlers. When doing day trips or weekend trips, I use an Explorer
16 (solo or tandem). On longer trips, I like a river with a bit of
whitewater, so I like a shorter boat: 17 or 17'6 is about max. I like
an OT Tripper when I can get ahold of one.

When I guided, of course I tried to keep all perishables out of the
client boats, and also keep their boats light, so I paddled the BH
solo with hundreds of pounds of gear for weeks on end. Not very good
for snappy turns, but I learned to use the currents,and man could I
glide through almost anything while laying on a brace. I also could
use the sharp end of eddy lines to help with turns, etc, so I never
really 'muscled' it around as much as some would think. In any case,
I got extremely comfortable with a big heavy boat, and anything less
than 16 foot still feels a bit small and skittish to me. I also like
long skis; I'm a bit old school.

All this is past tense, of course. I recently gave away the BH, and my
fleet now consists of a 16' and 14' Explorer (and a Folboat Aleut). I
need to get out in the shorter canoe more, but its racked in Maine and
of course, I'm in HK.


but a 17' is certainly a bit long for a solo boat (although
my first love was a Blue Hole 17A that I put a lot of solo miles on).

Well, a lot of high volume solo expedition boats and solo
performance boats are 17' or even longer but I'm talking
about trying to paddle a beamy 17' tandem solo and for me
that trick never works.

I accept that, and being good at pushing around River Pigs isn't
necessarily Merit Badge material. But I was thinking of what might
work best for the OP: if he's a novice or intermediate canoist, and
interested in standing and casting while having a dry and peaceful
experience, I'd recommend that he lead toward the longer side of the
16'-17' debate. For you and me, the recommendation is quite different.

Wasn't the Blue Hole a whitewater
boat ?

Yeah, BITD (back in the day), it was one of the original ww boats. The
idea was to have a high volume, low-rocker, flat bottomed boat that
would ride up and over big waves. The current trend of course is high
rocker and good flare to knife into big waves and rock through them
while the flare kicks the bow wave aside.

The result is that the BH has a niche in big water...I've run Class
IVs in it (loaded) and come out dry. But there's a difference between
survival boating and playboating. I'm a tripper, not a playboater.

I think the OP should put a lot of thought into how much solo vs
tandem paddling he is truly planning to do, and with how much gear.

Agreed. Either that or adopt the Wayne Knight method of gear
shopping, that is, buy both ! ;-)


Always a good solution.

--riverman