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Bill, you've tried a lot more canoes that I thought when you initially said you've had the Dragonfly since 1988. Even though I personally don't recall paddling a Curtis Dragonfly but have paddled the DF 15, there can be no doubt that the DF 15 is more stable. It is 2" wider at the waterline...

Not sure what you mean. All three canoes are 16' DY designs. All three have very close specs, especially the Polaris and Kee. The main difference I see is that the Curtis Northstar is from DY's bubble-sided tumblehome era, before his shouldered gunwale era, and all the Swift Kee hulls are a...

Robert, thanks for that detailed run down of decades of your canoe camping experience along with the pictures. Hope to see you again in the Pine Barrens . . . where you can be on the younger side. As I've aged, my canoe camping trips have diminished and I've become more of a base camp paddler...

Tom, I've never paddled either Northstar tandem or even seen them. However, I'll be bold and speculate that you and Nancy are of a size and vintage that would enjoy, and use, a lightweight day tripping tandem, which can easily be flipped on a small vehicle, significantly more than some big...

I'm behind the times and late to this thread. Thank you, Aslowhand, for this very interesting and dramatic trip report. Your English, grammar, spelling, and sentence structure are so good I've been wondering whether you are using some sort of language program or app. As to your canoe, are you a...

@Bill Fryer, none of the primary issues you state with your current Dragonfly is going to be solved simply by being fascinated or mesmerized by a canoe with a similar name. As a reductio ad absurdum, what would you choose if all canoes were called Dragonfly? Here are my thoughts from someone...

@RPATCH has a DF 15 that he has paddled many hundreds of miles in all sorts of conditions all over North America. Hopefully, he'll see this thread. I paddled his canoe on a very twisty creek in the NJ Pine Barrens, where it performed well, but there was no wind exposure and I can't compare it...

Lake Champlain, sometimes called the Sixth Great Lake, is approaching its first full ice cover since 2019, and perhaps at the earliest date this century. https://www.mynbc5.com/article/lake-champlain-full-freeze-coming-soon-02-03-26/70238799

We certainly have a lot of military targets in Montana, North Dakota and southeastern Wyoming. What are they?

Mason, at first I thought you were confusing a pack canoe with a PakCanoe, but I understood after you posted a picture of the tubular gunwale clamp. I'm trying to figure out a way to use my 42-year-old solo canoe gunwale clamp-on yoke on a potential canoe. @yknpdlr's glued-on blocks look like...

That reminds me that there there used to be, and maybe still are, fabric yokes that wrap around the entire hull. They were offered by the Bag Lady, Placid and maybe still are by Swift. https://swiftoutside.com/product/packable-fabric-yoke/ I recall @yellowcanoe not being particularly enthused...

The U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency probably didn't have canoeing in mind when they produced this map that shows which places in the USA would be blown to bits, burned to ashes, or contaminated by radioactive fallout after a full-scale nuclear exchange. But it looks like the canoeing...

My question was aimed at very lightweight (15-25 lb.), composite "pack canoes" from manufacturers such as Hormbeck, Slipstream, Placid, Savage River, Swift, Northstar and Wenonah. These pack canoes typically have no central thwart at all because that's where the seat is, and hence no...

Marc Ornstein gives an exhaustive list of why. https://freestylecanoeing.com/canoes-are-better-than-kayaks/ I'd only make a slight geographic codicil to this penultimate sentence: "Largely, inland paddlers used canoes of various forms because of their flexibility and adaptability while coastal...

Satellite photo, February 1, 2026

Samb, ribs sound like a potentially better solution than vertical supports descending from two extra thwarts. Did you have to steam or soak the ash rib before insertion to make it more bendable?

I don't know much about snakes, but the infallible interweb tells me that most pit vipers, including northern copperheads, have keeled scales. https://nationalzoo.si.edu/animals/northern-copperhead I also read that copperheads have "Hershey Kiss" or hourglass-shaped bands on their bodies. I...

A portage thwart can't be permanently installed because it would interfere with the central seat. Many pack canoes have thin or no inwales, so there is nothing or nothing much for a clamp-on portage yoke to clamp onto. So, how do you pack canoeists carry your canoes? With some sort of...