Recent content by Nick Pending

Thanks, Benson. It was obviously not Old Town. They were just the only name I could come up with who made boats like that at that time. The boat I was thinking of would be of the style like the Prijon Dolphin on the second page, essentially a flatwater sprint looking boat that was modified for...

I seem to remember a kayak design I think back in the '70s that utilized a chopped off stern like that, and my faulty memory calls it something like the Hall effect. I can only find Hall effect via Google to refer to electrical and magnetic physics rather than nautical or hydraulic physics...

I thought I'd posted this here already, but can't find hide nor hair of it, so here it is, the ultimate in roller portages. Please forgive me if I or someone else posted it and I couldn't find it. This was at the site of the whitewater slalom course at the Paris Olympics last summer (2024)...

A quick look at the site linked above doesn't seem to cover any of the materials in use like most paddlers require them, which are mainly in composite structures. That I saw, it only mentions the fibers used in ropes and fabric weaves meant for protective clothing and automobile upholstry, which...

I'll add my own "Happy Canoe Year" to everyone, also.

i have a couple kayaks that I likely now own. Not sure of status though. They were given to me years ago (40+?) by a couple friends to store a boat out here for when they might want to paddle when visiting. Both of those friends have since died and I still have their boats. I've never gotten...

If you want to keep weight down, your described glued-in side pegs would be the lightest. If you want some versatility, though with a little more weight, the crossbar with adjustments for fore and aft would be better as they can be adjusted along the length of the hull for different paddlers as...

I wouldn't necessarily agree with this, though I was alway pretty much a packhorse on trips. I first started paddling 75-lb. Grummans and my first boat was a little heavier at about 80 pounds, I slowly gravitated (get it? Sorry!) to lighter boats and never really had any problems carrying them...

Thanks, Al. The poles I started out with were I think 10-foot wooden poles with a steel pointy shoe on one end, sold by Old Town that I bought from the canoe retailer I worked for at the time. I think maybe an inch and a half diameter? Sitka spruce sticks in my mind as the source wood, but not...

Days on the water for me are likely over so this is all a virtual lesson for me now. If I'm standing with a paddle, I don't have to drop to a seat or kneel as I already have the paddle like I might have to do with a pole. And if I have a pole, that Harry Rock windmill stroke is too similar to a...

I've done the same with a bent shaft (knowing how angles work), but my paddle is only 48 inches long, a bit of a reach for such a short paddle in an 18-6 canoe. (That's not a joke < grin >)

I used my carbon/Kevlar bent shaft and left the otter and beaver tails on the poor mustalids and castorids. (That's a joke!)

I tried poling back in the mid 1970s, but didn't like it because we did a lot of deep-water paddling and a pole didn't seem of much use to me in deep water. That and I knew how to brace and there isn't one with a pole in deep water, or at least for me. I bought a 6-foot paddle and did a lot of...

Recurve stems require either a two-piece mold or split end mold so they can get the finished hull out of said mold. That recurve blocks demolding of the finished hull whether composite or rubber (meaning Royalex or T-Formex or other similar material use). If the stems are slightly out of plumb...

I don't know about other Ontario canoeing parks, but Quetico at least for a while had a maximum group size of nine people. Again, I don't know if that is still in effect. When that was in effect, if someone wanted to fill a trip, they needed four tandem canoes and a solo boat, or three tandem...