1981 Mike Galt Essay: "The Solo Path"

[Glenn MacGrady]

This 1981 Canoe Magazine essay by Mike Galt is a poetic paean to solo canoeing, replete with many classic Galt-isms:

"Solo. Alone. But never lonely."

"The solo canoe: a light, slender form in utter symphony with wind and wave."

"An activity where men and women are equal. On the solo path, skill and knowledge supersede simple strength or mere gender."

"Solo paddling is a free-form performing art."

"There are those who think the solo canoe, at its best, represents the ultimate hull form."

"'Laying it down' is one of the solo paddler’s joys. Banking turns, after all, is quite natural and fun."

"Flare is a very subjective quality with me, so much so that I see no rational excuse for tumblehome in a real paddler’s canoe."

"Flare . . . gives a canoe life – read buoyancy – seaworthiness, and of course, final stability."

"While sitting and switching may be efficient, I find it undignified, ugly to watch, and boring to do."

Mike Galt—an opinionated pistol, a master wood carver, an eloquent stylist with paddle and pen, who designed canoes with a can of Bud and a Chesterfield dangling from his lip—man, I miss all the times I spent with that guy. Paddling. Dreaming. Philosophizing. Learning.

 

[snapper]

I fondly remember the old "Canoe" magazine with its numerous articles, photos and informative stories. Reading Mike Galt, Harry Roberts and others was my introduction to the philosophy and art of canoeing. I poured over those early magazines and spent endless hours absorbing all the knowledge they'd impart. I enjoyed the competing opinions of the authors, as well as the good natured bantering that went on between them. The magazine wasn't one big advertisement. It was an incredible education that was available to the masses. Man, how I miss it.

That's all for now. Take care and until next time...be well.

snapper

 

[Steve in Idaho]

Well, I missed that whole era. Thank heavens we have canoetripping.net.

And Mike's sentiments on solo canoes match mine, but he says it much better than I ever could.

Thanks, Glenn.

 

[stevet]

Certainly do miss those days…the heyday of solo canoeing. Replete with characters, excitement over something “new” at canoe demo days, the Conclave events, and the construction of the FreeStyle instruction program (the maneuvers themselves had been done for hundreds of years or more).
A more in depth Galt writing is the famous “The Solo Mystique” which can be found here…

The Solo Mystique – FreeStyle Canoeing

Talk about a character, Mike designed canoes by carving a half model until “it looked right”, and then scaled up. Hard to imagine but that’s what he told me. Of course with Mike he could have been kidding?
Ahhh memories……

 

[Glenn MacGrady]

A more in depth Galt writing is the famous “The Solo Mystique” which can be found here…
The Solo Mystique – FreeStyle Canoeing

From the Wayback Machine, here is that essay in its original 1978 Wilderness Camping magazine format complete with pictures, which I've posted before:

Mike Galt - The Solo Mystique

The rebirth of the pure solo canoe is the most exciting single event to occur in sport canoeing in this century.

web.archive.org

Mike designed canoes by carving a half model until “it looked right”, and then scaled up. Hard to imagine but that’s what he told me. Of course with Mike he could have been kidding?

I recall the same information from both Galt and Pat Moore, but have a dim memory that they were quarter models.

I first met Mike in 1984 when I visited him in Tampa at his place on the banks of the Hillsborough River. I bought a Lotus BJX from him on that trip after paddling one with its namesake, Bardy Jones, in the Everglades. We kept in occasional touch by phone and letter until I visited Tampa again in 1986. I was then going by rental car to Tallahassee on business with a return to Tampa. Mike was pushing his Lotus Caper canoe for solo "sport canoeing" (later "freestyle") purposes and simply gave me one to take on my rental car to Tallahassee and back, encouraging me to paddle it on rivers along the way, which he mapped out for me. No paperwork, no money, nothing but trust.

With sparkling eye and his dangling Chesterfield, he simply said, "I know you'll buy it when you return." And I did! He had even carved for me a custom new seat in the meantime. The canoe remained roped on top of my Hertz and was driven all the way back to Woodstock, NY, leaving me to explain to IBM why I hadn't used the return portion of my airline ticket.

He even gave me the Blackburn brothers Sea-1 bent shaft paddle, seen in this picture with the Lotus Caper.

 

[Steve in Idaho]

From the Wayback Machine, here is that essay in its original 1978 Wilderness Camping magazine format complete with pictures, which I've posted before:

Mike Galt - The Solo Mystique

The rebirth of the pure solo canoe is the most exciting single event to occur in sport canoeing in this century.

web.archive.org

I recall the same information from both Galt and Pat Moore, but have a dim memory that they were quarter models.

I first met Mike in 1984 when I visited him in Tampa at his place on the banks of the Hillsborough River. I bought a Lotus BJX from him on that trip after paddling one with its namesake, Bardy Jones, in the Everglades. We kept in occasional touch by phone and letter until I visited Tampa again in 1986. I was then going by rental car to Tallahassee on business with a return to Tampa. Mike was pushing his Lotus Caper canoe for solo "sport canoeing" (later "freestyle") purposes and simply gave me one to take on my rental car to Tallahassee and back, encouraging me to paddle it on rivers along the way, which he mapped out for me. No paperwork, no money, nothing but trust.

With sparkling eye and his dangling Chesterfield, he simply said, "I know you'll buy it when you return." And I did! He had even carved for me a custom new seat in the meantime. The canoe remained roped on top of my Hertz and was driven all the way back to Woodstock, NY, leaving me to explain to IBM why I hadn't used the return portion of my airline ticket.

He even gave me the Blackburn brothers Sea-1 bent shaft paddle, seen in this picture with the Lotus Caper.

View attachment 146419

The flare is obvious in that boat!

 

[Glenn MacGrady]

The flare is obvious in that boat!

The Caper is not nearly as flared as Galt's earlier Dandy, BJX and Egret, and was possibly his least flared canoe. It's also the first commercially available canoe I'm aware of to have sharply "tucked in" gunwales, which don't protrude over the side of the hull. It's certainly not Yost's earlier Sawyer "bubble-sided" tumblehome, still available on current Swift canoes, nor his later "shouldered tumblehome," first commercially available on the Curtis Dragonfly. Galt's version was a sharp crease-in of the top two inches of the sheer line, sort of what Harold Deal later did on his SRT.

 

[Steve in Idaho]

The Caper is not nearly as flared as Galt's earlier Dandy, BJX and Egret, and was possibly his least flared canoe. It's also the first commercially available canoe I'm aware of to have sharply "tucked in" gunwales, which don't protrude over the side of the hull. It's certainly not Yost's earlier Sawyer "bubble-sided" tumblehome, still available on current Swift canoes, nor his later "shouldered tumblehome," first commercially available on the Curtis Dragonfly. Galt's version was a sharp crease-in of the top two inches of the sheer line, sort of what Harold Deal later did on his SRT.

Maybe that's what I'm seeing. Or one accentuates the other.

 

[stripperguy]

We’ve had discussions here before WRT Mike and the intertwined relation with Harry Roberts too.
I was a Roberts fan, preferred the sit and switch style in faster, sleeker boats. I used to live a few miles from Harry’s spot in Rotterdam Junction. MDB and I would often see him paddling on the Mohawk, we had no chance of keeping up with him.
Up until a few years ago, you could still see the shadow of that giant R on his barn…
I miss those days and the Wilderness Camping magazine that I subscribed to, wishing now that I would have kept every issue.

 

[tketcham]

his 1981 Canoe Magazine essay by Mike Galt is a poetic paean to solo canoeing...

Interesting that Mike Galt wrote about tandem sport canoeing in his "Tandem Moves" section of Canoesport Journal.

 

[Gamma1214]

I've tried to find his obituary with the wayback machine but the search was fruitless (which is, in itself, sad). I suspect the he was a writer and, while he would, ideally, write about his true passions, the reality of writing for a magazine may be that you write what you are asked to write.

 

[tketcham]

I suspect the he was a writer and, while he would, ideally, write about his true passions, the reality of writing for a magazine may be that you write what you are asked to write.

Good point, but I was thinking more about his perspectives on solo and tandem sport canoeing. I went back and looked at Mike Galt's first article for Canoesport Journal (Vol. 1, No. 1, Autumn 1987) and this is what he starts out with:

"Tandem Magic"
"Tandem! Funny. Time was when I wouldn't be caught dead in a tandem canoe. I've changed. I've come full circle. I still paddle solo, some, but the same things that drove me to solo in the first place have driven me back to tandem: my fascination with, and my passion for, fine canoes, paddling them well, and my belief that the open canoe has potential far beyond that which it now realizes."

At the end of the article there's a short explanation of how he was asked by Harry Roberts, editor, to write a regular column on tandem sport canoeing after Harry saw Mike's tandem exhibition team perform.

 

[stevet]

You sometimes are asked to write about something specific but that doesn’t necessarily compromise the writer’s integrity. Was fortunate enough to take Harry Roberts down my local river in Ohio and he asked me to write about it for Paddler magazine. I was flattered and I did it with the affection I felt for my local run.

 

[tketcham]

You sometimes are asked to write about something specific but that doesn’t necessarily compromise the writer’s integrity.

I didn't mean to suggest he was compromising in order to write for Canoesport Journal, but thought it was interesting how people and their priorities change over time. Mike Galt obviously loved both solo and tandem canoeing, just had different priorities at different times in his life.

Note: I edited my previous post to reflect this.

 

[Glenn MacGrady]

I've tried to find his obituary with the wayback machine but the search was fruitless (which is, in itself, sad).

Patrick Moore, who knew Mike Galt personally and professionally probably as well as anyone in the 1970s and early 80s, wrote a long obituary-bio-tribute article about Mike Galt's life after he died, at least part of which was published in Paddler magazine. Patrick's full bio used to be available at this URL — http://moorecanoeing.com/sportcanoeing/Mike_Galt_obituary.html — but that link is now dead and I foolishly never downloaded the obituary.

I do have notes from Patrick Moore's article that Mike Galt was an assumed name. Galt's real name was George Robert Frampton. He took the name Galt because it was his mother's maiden name.

I also have emails from Patrick Moore in which he discusses exactly when he and Mike conceived of "sport canoeing." He wrote me, wistfully:

"I can tell you the afternoon and evening when Galt and I conceived sport canoeing, for example, January 7, 1977. Actually, it was Galt's conception, but I was his inspiration, and I soon chimed in--at least after a couple of hours of playing devil's advocate while trying to figure out what he was so enthusiastic about. I can still even see him in those moments. I'm just glad that anyone cares, and it seems that quite a few do, now more than ever for some reason."

This was in October of 2011 when Patrick had been reading and participating in some of my canoe history and canoe physics threads on pnet, and when he was being urged to re-emerge into the canoe world by @MikeVB. Patrick seemed enthusiatic about doing so, and asked me and Greg Spencer (in England, who used to post as snowgoose.skipper) to proofread a long history of sport canoeing he was writing. I did not save the drafts of that history, and then Patrick just disappeared. I don't know where he is or if he still is.

Sic transit gloria mundi.

There is a lot more about Galt in the following thread:

Opinionated Soloists Galt vs Roberts.

not that all of us soloists are opinionated.. mff....:rolleyes: We were looking at a Blackhawk Canoe that has been at Lincoln Canoe and Kayak in Freeport ME for at least a year. Its 1994 mint and is either 12 or 13 feet long. Cane seat some rocker.. FreeStyle shape bottom. Its a beautiful solo...

www.canoetripping.net

 

[tketcham]

Thanks for the historical perspective, Glenn. Enjoyed rereading that thread.

 

[Steve in Idaho]

That was a fun thread to revisit!

 

[Halpc]

This was an enjoyable read. I've kept most of my old Canoesport Journals and like to re-read the articles by Harry Roberts et al, usually on cold, snowy nights. The old ads are also interesting 40-50 years later.