Someone asked me in another thread why I am opposed to the preemptive installation of skid plates on canoes. Cliff Jacobson has just published an article on this abrasive subject, and since he is channeling my opinion and experience, I'll let him serve as my surrogate. I'll excerpt some quotes from him:
If you want to reduce the value of your canoe by about 200 dollars, put a thick, ugly skid plate on each end! Here’s why you don’t want skid plates!
While there will be technical and aesthetic retorts to some of Cliff's post-damage skid plate installation methods, I believe his three arguments above against preemptive skid plate installation are sound, even if a fabric other than Kevlar felt is used, as is his long wilderness experience with skid-plate-less canoes:
While I have nothing close to Cliff's wilderness tripping experience, I do have decades of experience in hard whitewater with Royalex and SSKK composite canoes. While many of those whitewater canoes are quite banged up, NONE has ever worn out at the stems. A couple of my Royalex solo canoes with centralized saddles have worn through the vinyl layer directly under the saddle, because that is the deepest part of those highly rockered hulls and the most likely part to scrape over rocks. The most active tandem couple in our club would wear out the Royalex underneath the much heavier husband's stern seat every several years, but again not at the stems or ends.
None of my several composite flatwater canoes that I've purchased since 1984 shows any appreciable damage at the ends, or anywhere on the bottom, really. I've always been as careful as possible not to grind a composite canoe onto the shore when entering and exiting, fully wet footed if necessary, unless there is no alternative. And I don't run composite lake canoes in impossibly bony rapids.
If you want to reduce the value of your canoe by about 200 dollars, put a thick, ugly skid plate on each end! Here’s why you don’t want skid plates!
1. They add two or more pounds to a canoe--that’s weight you’ll have carry! Worse, the weight is added to the extreme ends of the canoe, which affects its "swing" weight or ability to gracefully carve turns. The flywheel effect of this is most pronounced in lightweight solo canoes where the paddler is located at the center. But accomplished paddlers in high-performance tandem canoes will notice it too.
2. You can't sand Kevlar (it frizzes into string) so the harsh edges of the thick felt pads won't fair in to match the smooth contours of the hull. The result is increased wetted surface which slows the canoe and produces an audible gurgling noise.
3. Skid plates are (choose an expletive!) UGLY!
While there will be technical and aesthetic retorts to some of Cliff's post-damage skid plate installation methods, I believe his three arguments above against preemptive skid plate installation are sound, even if a fabric other than Kevlar felt is used, as is his long wilderness experience with skid-plate-less canoes:
Installing skid plates BEFORE there is any damage is akin to covering expensive leather car seats with cheap plastic! For two decades, my five Royalex tripping canoes were used on scores of tough rivers in northern Canada. They were lashed to the struts of float planes, shoved into crowded rail cars, dragged like dogs on a leash across the tundra, and paddled, heavily loaded, in long, difficult rapids. With just one exception (a split end that required a fiberglass field patch), duct tape was the only “on-the-river” repair material I ever needed.
While I have nothing close to Cliff's wilderness tripping experience, I do have decades of experience in hard whitewater with Royalex and SSKK composite canoes. While many of those whitewater canoes are quite banged up, NONE has ever worn out at the stems. A couple of my Royalex solo canoes with centralized saddles have worn through the vinyl layer directly under the saddle, because that is the deepest part of those highly rockered hulls and the most likely part to scrape over rocks. The most active tandem couple in our club would wear out the Royalex underneath the much heavier husband's stern seat every several years, but again not at the stems or ends.
None of my several composite flatwater canoes that I've purchased since 1984 shows any appreciable damage at the ends, or anywhere on the bottom, really. I've always been as careful as possible not to grind a composite canoe onto the shore when entering and exiting, fully wet footed if necessary, unless there is no alternative. And I don't run composite lake canoes in impossibly bony rapids.