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Outrigger paddlers typically use bent shafts that have a ("tulip") shape the same as or very similar to marathon canoe racing paddles, but usually somewhat greater in blade area. You can even see this on the ZRE website. Their flatwater paddle page has Power Surge and Revolution blades from...

Okraman, welcome to site membership! Feel free to ask any questions and to post messages, photos and videos, and to start threads, in our many forums. Please read Welcome to CanoeTripping and Site Rules! Also, because canoeing is a geographic sport, please add your location to the Account...

Have we had in this Goliath thread the inside of a composite canoe making shop? This is the Savage River Canoe facility in Oakland, Maryland, this morning cutting the bottoms off my Illusion's seat bolts. A canoe mold is in the foreground and a racing canoe in the background. Rolls of foam are...

I was at Savage River today. They will be at WPSCR and will definitely have a June Bug there—a red Textreme one for @Marc Ornstein. In their shop, I lifted a green Textreme LIte June Bug with an S-glass outer layer, but with no seat, and it seemed to weigh about 12 pounds. I could lift it with...

Marc, I'm at Savage River right now. Ben Diller said all your comp canoes have had the UV blocking clear coat that I referenced above. Mine doesn't. I looked at Savage River's canoe covers custom made for the Illusion both by RedLeaf and another source, which is $100 less expensive than the...

You have a trailer? I may attend.

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...