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In prep for my week in the Jersey Pine Barrens, one short paddle last week was not enough for me to familiarize myself with the Illusion. But windy and other bad weather has kept me off the water. So, to beat the wind, I paddled early this morning from my local put-in on the Housatonic River —...

I think that's why Mike liked it. He camps a lot in sandy areas such as Assateague Island. I'm going to search for that grass mat, as the NJ Pine Barrens, where I'll be next week, is very sandy.

I find it useful to have some sort of rectangular "door mat" or "rug" outside one or both of my tent entrances to help prevent trekking in dirt, mud, sand, etc., especially when base camping. It's also a place for me to kneel when I get out of a tent without having to kneel on wet or dewy...

I'm trying to practice locally in my new Savage River Illusion to get more comfortable with its initial stability before going on a trip this weekend, but it's been too windy for my deteriorating semicircular canals. I did figure out how to set up my CCS tarp with five poles by myself in the...

Marc, last fall Savage River had one of your early comp Illusions for sale. It had a UV blocking clear coat on it, which is now a $500 option that adds a pound of weight. (It sounds like Swift's "UV shield".) I passed on that option. I wonder if your current Illusion has that clear coat, which...

Well, don't the bugs then end up squashed all over the cover? Isn't bug goo easier to clean off a hull than off a fabric? The bug argument convinces me naught. I've cartopped dozens of canoes for tens of thousands of miles all over North America for the past 50 years without canoe covers, and...

I don't own a smart watch and never will. For mapping while tripping, I use a Garmin GPS mounted on the thwart in front of me with street, topo, satellite, and ocean coastal maps, along with tide charts, loaded into it. Trying to read such maps off a screen as small as a watch face seems like...

I've always noticed lots of canoe covers on flatwater racing canoes, going back to the 80s when there was a lot of skin coat Kevlar hulls. However, I've rarely seen covers on recreational canoes. Mostly, I've seen them on Tom MacKenzie (Loon Works) wood-canvas canoes in the Freestyle community...

I'll post a full review with lots of photos in about three weeks after I test the canoe for four days in the Pine Barrens and on some lakes and other rivers. I still have quite a few canoes and kayaks, many being old whitewater models or decrepit, but my plan for my ninth decade is have two...

After lunch on the Mullica River in the Jersey Pine Barrens last October, @Marc Ornstein said: "Glenn, do you want to paddle my boat?" I liked the maneuverability of the Illusion a lot. Hence, that short sentence is the direct cause of this purchase. If the sentence had never been uttered, my...

Speaking of alcohol, while I was under the influence of it once in college, a seemingly knowledgeable guy said if I sprayed Zippo cigarette lighter fluid on my arm and lit it, my skin wouldn't get burned. So, I did it on a small patch of my arm near the running sink in my dorm room and nothing...

For canoes, these protective layers along the stems and part of the keel are called "skid plates". We have many threads here discussing whether and when skid plates are needed—people disagree—and how to make and install them with many photos. Use the site's search function for the term "skid...

Good points. Yes, I do lock and even double lock my seat and/or thwarts onto my racks when away from home. I never thought about loosening the straps a bit, but that seems like a reasonable precaution. Another interesting point. I wonder if a canoe cover makes that possibility better, worse or...

I have Bag Lady/RedLeaf custom covers for my Morris wood-canvas canoe and my Swift Keewaydin 15 because those covers came with both canoes when I bought them on the used market. However, I've only used those covers for storage purposes and have never used them for cartopping travel. The Morris...

I've bought a new Savage River Illusion canoe, which cost more money than I ever imagined I would spend. To lighten the weight, which was one of my primary objectives in getting the canoe, it's made of Textreme carbon and Kevlar with an outer layer that is a so-called skin coat—i.e., no gelcoat...

I think I've mixed up two Idaho cities in my memory of that trip. Only Boise has an REI, so I probably just stopped there to buy the headlamp and some other stuff. The city further east where I stayed overnight, and that had mesas and plateaus near it, was Twin Falls. I distinctly remember being...

Thanks. For those who don't want to open the PDF, here's the opening graph:

This site is really thorough and well-organized: https://www.newenglandwaterfalls.com/ The following page from the website has pictures of the top 40 waterfalls of New England. I've seen some of them and canoed upstream many times to the base of 40-foot Grand Falls on the Dead River, Maine...

RR, great description of your run and the Penobscot. Kudos also to the photographers who caught all those stages of your descent and surfing. From the photos, I would have run the same line you did down the right side and then angling through the chute. In the following video, three Old Town...