Just got back home with my new Old Towne canoe. It’s a square-stern three-seater with a 750 pound capacity. Should be enough for me, the Cosmic Wife and one of the Cosmic Kids… I suppose the other one can just swim.
Not sure why I waited so long to buy a canoe. I’ve wanted one forever. I used to have an 18 foot fiberglass bass boat with a 60hp Johnson outboard motor, so I know what it’s like to be on the water all day (and sometimes all night). But I had to retire my bass boat just before getting married due to an unfortunate midnight meeting at top speed with a slightly submerged floating log in the middle of Lake Bisteneau. It broke the transom. Luckily I was able to limp back to the boat dock, but that was the last time I had a boat of my own in the water.
One of the best memories my wife and I have of our first summer vacation as a married couple was tooling around Kentucky Lake in a canoe we rented as we were on our way to her yearly family reunion. We didn’t do any fishing, just paddled around and lazed around in the shade of trees watching the wildlife. So you’d think we’d have bought a canoe a long time ago.
This time I bought a trolling motor too. So we will be able to paddle if we like, but if we want to be lazy and still cruise around, we can go as far as a deep cycle 12 volt battery can take us. Which ought to be pretty far in a canoe.
So tomorrow both of the Cosmic kids are going to be working, meaning the Cosmic Wife and I are planning to have Memorial Day all to ourselves in our new canoe. I’m looking forward to it.
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Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackHave a great day, Cosmic!
My wife wants a single seat kayak. Probably some subliminal message there…
Took the canoe to Chatfield Reservoir (a lake that is considered a “large impoundment” in the Denver area, but would be called a “pond” where I grew up). It did well. Unfortunately the water is low and we had to slide the canoe across some rocks at one point, which scratched it up more than I would have liked for our first outing.
Still, the trolling motor did well, it’s only a 45 pound thrust (the guy tried to sell me a 55 pound thrust) but it did well even against a stiff wind.
It’s heavy enough that loading it is a two man operation. The Cosmic Wife couldn’t get her end up and a guy at the launch site volunteered to help me load it back on the car. I’ll work out a way to do it by myself. I got it down by myself when we got home.
I’m thinking of a three-legged stand with a pole that I can put under one end and then swivel the canoe off the top of the car from the other end. I think that would work. I bet there’s something like that on the market.
Sho ’nuff!
Canoe loader
My question is, what was the canoe originally developed for? It appears that its main function was to travel fast, since it’s not good for hauling large amounts of stuff. So what was the need to travel fast that made it popular?
Or did they do things like use it for hunting trips, and then just drag stuff home in the water behind them?
I guess I’m just asking about what its utility would have been 200-500 years ago, versus its basic utility now (“fun”).
Howdy Dean, long time no see.
I suppose I will have to pretend to be a small watercraft expert for a moment. Of course, as you know, I am well practiced in the art of pretending to be any of a variety of experts.
The modern canoe is a fair approximation of the Native American watercraft from which the name is derived. However, it is also very similar to a variety of other watercraft that have been used throughout the world, such as pirogues, dugouts or even small portable boats.
My canoe, for example, is over fifteen feet long and has a square stern, and is quite wide in the middle. I don’t think your typical fifteenth century Iriquois would recognize my watercraft as a “canoe.”
As far as I can tell, the designation of “canoe” in modern terminology depends almost entirely on the front end of the boat being pointed with a curved prow, and with the construction being primarily based on the skin of the craft providing the structural integrity. You can’t even say that “canoe” means a small boat with a deep V hull, which used to be the case. My canoe is quite broad and flat on the bottom, and has a very shallow draft.
My understanding of the traditional use of canoes by the people from whom the term is derived is pretty close to what people use them for today. Of course they didn’t have cars or trucks to haul them around, nor did they have electric or internal combustion engines to push them through the water. So they necessarily were small and light. But they were still used to navigate small lakes, ponds and rivers.
To me, probably one of the major differences between modern canoe use and traditional canoe use is not where they are used and why they are used, but more about the expectations of the modern canoe user.
For example… Here is the list of stuff I had in my canoe that a typical Cherokee would find completely incomprehensible:
Total all that up and it probably weighed as much as a person. A typical Native American in a canoe probably had a bow, quiver and a couple of pouches to hold hook and line for fishing, trail rations and waterskin.
If we could figure out a way to add an air conditioner to a canoe, I think Cabella’s would sell one.
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