Hey Glenn,
I usually go on a Boundary Waters trip with a young guy. He's only 72. :>
We've celebrated his birthday for the last 3 years in the BW.
Larry
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Happy D.B. Cooper Day (1971)! ✈️💵🪂
Poll: How old were you when you got YOUR OWN first canoe (and what was it)?
- Thread starter Glenn MacGrady
- Start date
I usually go on a Boundary Waters trip with a young guy. He's only 72. :>
We've celebrated his birthday for the last 3 years in the BW.
Larry
Late 40’s. After I totaled a 17’ grumman in a first for me white water trip with a buddy I picked up a used OT Discovery 174, slides over rocks much better than the grumman. Since then I’ve replaced the Grumman which stays on the pond now! I have also acquired a OT tripper an OT Discovery 164 and a Wenonah moccasin and now the 1958-59 Old Town Guide wood canvas that is a project. It’s a disease, I now own 8 canoes, with the 2 coleman 15’s at our rentals.
In Boy Scouts our troupe took some weekend canoe trips and a couple of week long trips during the years I was a member. We used aluminium canoes. The last trip was to the boundary waters in 73. I was 15 at the time and it made quite an impression. I always dreamed of going back. Flash forward to 1992. It was late winter and between cabin fever and my job I was feeling stressed out so I took a drive to Starks in Prairie Du Chien Wiss, about 90 miles from where I live. I didn't have anything in mind, I just needed to get out. Well I noticed that they had Old towns on sale and got a brain storm to buy one and take our family of three to the BWCA. I literally made the 90 mile trip home in an hour and fifteen minutes excited to tell my wife the good news that I was going to buy a canoe. She said she was happy for me but she wasn't interested in going canoeing herself. (sad trombone music here). Well I went back to Starks and bought my first canoe anyway thinking she would change her mind. It was a disco 169 for $369. Not knowing any better I thought I was in heaven. At 34 I didn't have trouble getting the 85 lb tub on my shoulders. I hadn't discovered portage pads yet so I would jog with it so I could put it down sooner. At 65 I now feel good if I can port my 48 lb boat at a walking pace. The disco was very stable which was a good thing for my novice crew, but the 85 lb weight and the one size fits all roto molded seats got old. In 94 I bought a OT Camper, my first royalex boat. That was followed by a OT Penobscot 17 in 98.
These days I have a Nova Craft Pal to solo trip with, although it hasn't seen a trip for years. For day trips on local rivers I have a NC Bob Special.
These days I have a Nova Craft Pal to solo trip with, although it hasn't seen a trip for years. For day trips on local rivers I have a NC Bob Special.
While in college back in 1982 I paddled a friend's C1 decked whitewater canoe down a Class one river with a group in open canoes. I ended up buying the canoe, which I was told that it was a Hahn designed slalom canoe built by the Georgia Canoe Club in the mid-70's. Talk about a crash course in strokes, paddle control and swimming; that boat would turn if you looked sideways, wouldn't go straight on a bet and would turn turtle with the slightest provocation! It was fiberglass with a foam pedestal, thigh straps made from auto seat belt webbing and weighed in the mid 40s if memory serves right. I paddled it for the next half dozen or so years on everything from slow moving rivers up to class 4 whitewater. Soon after I also got a Perception Mirage kayak to use as my creek boat because you didn't have to repair it after running rocky Appalachian creeks, but I still loved the C-1. We whitewater C-boaters used to say "Half the paddle, twice the paddler".
The first open canoe that I purchased was a Coleman 16' in 1985. I learned a lot from that canoe. Mostly I learned what a canoe should not be.
Thus the fever began. I have (at last count) owned 29 varieties of canoes and kayaks since I learned the joys of paddling.
The first open canoe that I purchased was a Coleman 16' in 1985. I learned a lot from that canoe. Mostly I learned what a canoe should not be.
Thus the fever began. I have (at last count) owned 29 varieties of canoes and kayaks since I learned the joys of paddling.
The first canoe I owned was the first canoe I built, somewhere in my mid 30s. It was a terrible canoe. I sawed it in thirds after I built a better one.
I was 22 when I got my first canoe, which I bought outright, brand new. I started canoeing earlier, but borrowed or rented boats before getting my own. I wanted to do a long canoe trip after graduating from college, so ordered a custom fiberglass one from a builder in Chicago shortly before I got out of school, and took delivery in late July, '71. It's a 17 foot "Canadien" from the Chicagoland Canoe Base, now defunct as has happened to too many canoe shops. Old Town Canoe licensed the design from the owner sometime around 1970 and sold them for several years. I understand the design influenced their Tripper model but don't know that for sure. They were fairly similar.
The Canadien was fairly expensive as canoes went for at the time, over $400, which is of course nothing nowdays, but a standard Grumman 17 footer was only $255 in 1971 if I remember right. I used that boat heavily up into the early 1990s and had to fix it several times as the construction wasn't any great shakes. I considered molding it but ended up replacing it instead.
It sat suspended in the rafters of my barn for about 30 years, taken down early this year and turned into a planter, a large garden container now filled with over a cubic yard of soil and (producing) strawberry plants. It was a great boat, still would be, but there are newer designs that are even better, if only for more specific paddling uses. I'm not expecting it to ever get used again. Would have to seal the dozen or so quarter-inch holes I drilled in the bottom first. Then new gunnels, seats, thwarts, deckplates. I'm too lazy now.
The Canadien was fairly expensive as canoes went for at the time, over $400, which is of course nothing nowdays, but a standard Grumman 17 footer was only $255 in 1971 if I remember right. I used that boat heavily up into the early 1990s and had to fix it several times as the construction wasn't any great shakes. I considered molding it but ended up replacing it instead.
It sat suspended in the rafters of my barn for about 30 years, taken down early this year and turned into a planter, a large garden container now filled with over a cubic yard of soil and (producing) strawberry plants. It was a great boat, still would be, but there are newer designs that are even better, if only for more specific paddling uses. I'm not expecting it to ever get used again. Would have to seal the dozen or so quarter-inch holes I drilled in the bottom first. Then new gunnels, seats, thwarts, deckplates. I'm too lazy now.
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