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I don't paddle in the bow much, but when I do I often use a partially deflated NFL football as a footbrace. The pressure can be adjusted to stem width and taste. Tom Brady would approve.

I've never cancelled a trip for rain, but on a loosely planned short trip I'll play the compass -- what's better, west to the Moose River, north to Chesuncook/Allagash, or east to downeast/Machias lakes. I love heading out into heavy rain (sans lightning, of course) when I know it will dawn...

That reminds me, last summer a farmer in central Maine lost 8 cows to lightning. They were all huddled together under a tree.

I usually get out of the boat (aluminum gunwales!) and try to find some skinny trees to loiter in. One thing to keep in mind about lightning is that the ground currents are more likely to get you than the more dramatic stuff (e.g., direct hit, poof!). To minimize ground current risk, obviously...

Gassabias Portage, west end. (Exploratory day trip, no crossing.) Trail was overgrown, but at least there were lots of blueberries.

I think if it were me I'd be tempted to stabilize the edge of the core and start patching. In your third picture the fiberglass on the outside of the core looks very solid. If the hull is still stiff enough (i.e., it doesn't oil can easily) then maybe the boat is strong enough with essentially...

What's it like on the inside of the hull in the area where the fiberglass is discolored? If you can knock on it and it's fairly solid, maybe you can move on from the grinding and just patch. Not every crown needs a root canal. Is the rotten material structural fiberglass or part of a foam core?

As I understand it the Millinocket Carry was the easiest/quickest route between two large watersheds, the Penobscot and the Aroostook / St John. If a pre-road traveller wanted to get from Bangor/Old Town/Medway/Millinocket/etc (anywhere along the Penobscot) to a town in the St John Valley (e.g...

The Penobscot below Medway is a big river, navigable anytime it isn't frozen. 5000 cfs today. There's been a ton of recent work on campsites by the Penobscot River Paddling Trail organization. They even have nice maps. It's not wilderness (there are paved roads around) but it's clean and quite...

Thanks for reading! Wolf trees are big trees that spread out horizontally. Sometimes there are wolf trees because of selective logging -- e.g., all the straight ones were cut down 100 years ago but a few irregulars were left since they would have been annoying on a log drive or in a sawmill...

Also following. Yeah, that's how you get out of the fecal leachate zone, just drive and/or portage a couple hours farther than is comfortable for a Taco Bell propelled camper. There are a lot of options for river trips down the Aroostook that are seldom done, even though they're "in the...

I don't know jack, but here's an old catalog page for the Oscadas. Sounds like a "Family 17" model?

Here's the way-upper East Branch Penobscot from a day paddle when I was scouting for a Millinocket Carry portage. IANA geologist but this is the same kind of shaley ledgy stuff they have around Old Town, which is ~150 miles downstream. I liked how these cedars got a handle on it. There was a...

For bannock I use Gil Gilpatrick's "Canoe Country Bread" recipe: 4 cups flour 1/2 cup sugar 4 tsps baking powder 3 tsps salt just add water (slowly, and not too much -- dough good, batter bad) There is nothing greasy, nothing that will go bad in less than months, but it tastes really good when...

Maybe if we ref him (hey @Jontario, we're eating your nachos!) he'll see a notification. I'm pretty far from Ontario but I love the exploratory aspect of the channel.

Nice work on the Safari! It's absolutely amazing that that boat survived it, after all those late day radical repairs and low water to boot. I've never seen a canoe re-bottomed that way -- bold. That tree limb photo is awesome. Wenonah's classic kevlar ultralight layup is not exactly bombproof...

5.5 miles, from Third Machias to Fifth Machias (Downeast Maine) to start a solo trip. I'd planned to drop boat/gear near the put-in and do a foot shuttle of that distance, but it was early April and the roads were closed due to frost, etc. I probably should have known that, but I was tripping...

A rod here, a chain there, why not just round up to the next furlong to keep it simple?

A friend of mine is doing the Yukon 1000 this year. I'm a little jealous, but at least I get to do the MR 340 again.

You are so a gunwale-ninja if you do this! I would think a 1" square tube would be more stiffness than you need. Can you get 3/4"? Have you considered blowing off the outwale bend and just using a simple strip of 1" (or 3/4") aluminum for the outwale (i.e., almost no outwale -- a long washer)...