Search results

Double blades are OK if you're in or near (a couple thousand furlongs, give or take) the Adirondacks, just remember to tip your hat to Nessmuk. Welcome!

I'm good with two cam buckle belly straps 95% of the time. The only time I add bow and stern ropes is when I'm driving long distance, more than a couple hundred miles at interstate speeds. I find the bow lines in particular can reduce the amount of yaw axis movement, which over time can cause...

Another resource is the NASA daily visible satellite shot. The only drawback is that if it's cloudy you may need to click back several days to see anything. https://worldview.earthdata.nasa.gov/?v=-70.21460463884455,45.323895900802064,-68.01724915727829,46.397395610025576

How rigid is the hull in the middle? If it's fairly stiff, it could be that it never had thwarts and doesn't need them. If it once had a center thwart/yoke I expect you'd see some signs of mounting, like whatever brackets are holding the seats. It also wouldn't surprise me if it never had...

Dugout canoes look just amazingly hard to build. It seems like it would be easier to hike a thousand miles to someplace that had birch bark, spruce roots, pine tar, etc, or maybe trap and skin a thousand squirrels to make a skin-on-frame boat. I guess if people really need a boat they'll find a...

I hate to be a gram weenie, but a couple coats of varnish on a carbon blade might add an ounce to the paddle. That's a lot for a stick that weighs less than a pound. When one of my carbon paddles needs nourishment I use a regular laminating epoxy, and as sparingly as I can.

Why not come up here for the 57th annual Kenduskeag Stream Canoe Race? Purportedly the largest paddlesports event in New England. https://bangorme.myrec.com/info/activities/program_details.aspx?ProgramID=28991 http://kenduskeagstreamcanoerace.com/ Last year there were ~350 boats, about 300...

That winter did indeed suck, but it's spring now, I've been out paddling a few times. Today we had this storm blow through with high winds and heavy rain, but just behind it the winds calmed down and the rain tapered to drizzle, so I headed out to the usual early spring stream in the late...

1. My suggestion would be to only remove as much as necessary to ensure the g-flex is getting in there and there won't be an air bubble under the skidplate. 2. I wouldn't remove the vinyl, just rough it up with sandpaper to help with the bond. The epoxy adheres to vinyl quite well. I've never...

Here's a restore job in this forum that used that 2-part marine foam. https://www.canoetripping.net/threads/replacing-floatation-in-a-fg-canoe.113984/ I'm chicken when it comes to materials with a working time measured in seconds, but I understand it's great when it works.

That's a piece of scrap minicell foam I hand cut to make a plug, picture here. When I closed the tanks I left a roughly half inch diameter hole for pressure release. The plugs fit pretty tight so I'm not too worried about them popping out. I thought a lot about what kind of decks I wanted, and...

Classic Mad River float tanks sure are great habitat for small furry animals. I don't know what lived in this one I refurbished, probably a squirrel. Great hulls though, well worth the effort. I ended up removing all the rotten foam and just closing them with fiberglass. There are a few...

I've been hoping to start the paddling season this weekend. It's supposed to be 50F-ish both days here. Pushaw Stream in Old Town never gets much ice, and it was open even before today's rains.

Yep, in Maine anyone with a license can take one buck, but you need to be lucky to get a doe permit. They want to keep the population up. You can't hunt over bait, but you can feed them for the heck of it. This is the northern extent of their historical range so back in the day a snowy winter...

Monhegan Island in Maine implemented the zero-deer solution, and it works. However it's a tiny community. Building consensus for that in a more populous area would be pretty hard. We can all blame Bambi. Here's a review paper on the subject...

Just watched @Jontario's video of, ho hum, canoe tripping on Lake Superior in February.

This is more on the sad story of the safe & effective lyme vaccine that isn't made anymore. https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/5/7/17314716/lyme-disease-vaccine-history-effectiveness Here in Maine they vary a lot from place to place. It's still much better (fewer ticks overall & more...

That's cool. You do often see that pattern of a modern road following a historic route. I was wondering why the portage trail veered at all, usually they're quite straight, so I looked at the link. Perhaps at high water there was a shorter route through the marsh that avoided the north-south...

Sometimes I'm just trying to get to my destination, but when there's a hiking trail to an interesting place or overlook along a canoe route and I actually stop and do it I'm always glad I did. I can think of a half dozen such places in Maine, but just to call one out, here's the Owl's Head...

Can you post a photo or link of that box? I recently bought a fat, zoomy point & shoot and I haven't yet figured out how to pack it. Hear ya, most crashes occur during takeoff or landing. I actually lost my last camera in a whitewater dump, but that'll never happen again ...