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Tom has a Facebook Page although I don't see any entries on it since his birthday last June. For a while after he sold OCNE he was doing some private instruction is canoeing in the area of Billerica, MA. More recently he seems to have returned closer to his old haunts at Greenfield, MA. Last...

The WWC1 is not a bad dog canoe if properly trimmed. As others have said, it is/was a Gene Jensen downriver racing design. As emphasizes straight ahead efficiency with enough depth to remain reasonably dry going through waves or over small drops. It is also a reasonable flatwater tripping...

It is relatively easy to mount a pump in an open boat that has a foam pedestal. I typically mount an Attwood Tsunami T1200 right behind the pedestal by applying some heavy duty Velcro to the bottom of the pump basket and the hull floor, and securing it with a loop of shock cord that runs...

Retired general and peripheral vascular surgeon. Would I choose that career again? No.

Check out trabecular bone, also known as cancellous or "spongy" bone. The photo shows the structure of this type of bone which we are all walking around with. Maybe not exactly like Royalex foam core structure but rather similar.

After you fix the cold cracks and refinish the wood trim it will be a great boat. The location of the cracks are typical, one might say classical, for cold cracks. It is the gunwale screws that is the culprit, not the deck plates. By the way, flame oxidation is completely different from...

Although it is possible for any Royalex canoe to hull, V bottom Mad River hulls are relatively resistant to hogging since the V contour adds rigidity. I really don't appreciate any hogging in the photos but you have to put a long strait edge on the hull bottom to be certain. If any hogging...

The most common place for cold cracks to occur is near the stems of the canoe. That is where the difference in expansion between the gunwales and the hull will have its greatest effect. That is probably for the better because the Royalex is somewhat thicker near the stems on most Royalex boats.

Just the hull. Although there is a fair bit of mystery surrounding the formation of cold cracks the predominant theory is differential thermal expansion of wood and Royalex. Royalex actually expands and contracts a fair bit with changes in temperature and wood less so. So if the hull expands...

If you buy it and wind up buying it and taking the gunwales off I would do two things. First, elongate all of the gunwale screw holes in the hull in the fore and aft direction a bit. That will reduce the chance of having more cold cracks occur in the future. Second, make sure you treat the...

This is for the benefit (hopefully) of the OP who is trying to decide whether or not to purchase the canoe. Repairing cold cracks is not difficult if you have some patience and a little time. Although some back up their repair with an internal patch of fiberglass or some other fabric, I have...

Although there are those who say that Royalex canoes become brittle with age and some who have actually experienced this, I have Royalex canoes that date back to the early 1980s that are doing just fine. You have a couple of "cold cracks". I would not let that prevent me from buying the canoe...

Both aramid and carbon fiber have very high strength to weight ratios so they allow construction of a light canoe. Aramid has much better strength in tension than compression so it is best used for interior layers where the fibers will be stretched if the outer convex hull is indented. Carbon...

G Flex will work and I have used it to effect repairs in many Royalex canoes and also a few single-layer polyethylene kayaks and C-1s (one of which was a cross-linked PE hull) and one three-layer, roto-molded PE canoe. But to achieve a satisfactory bond to PE using G Flex epoxy you must first...

Plastic welding is often used to repair cracks in single-layer, linear polyethylene canoes and kayaks. The Ram-X material is a three-layer rotomolded PE material with a foam core. What is more, it is described as "cross-link thermoformed high density polyethylene". There are two chemically...

As for full-on whitewater solos, I have owned many and paddled more over the years. My three all-time favorites would probably be my Royalex Mad River ME, my Clipper Viper 12 (composite version of the Mohawk Viper 12), and my Dagger Ocoee. My favorite flat water solo is my Wenonah Advantage...

The Starfire, Flashfire, and Wildfire were designed by David Yost on commission from Charlie Wilson when the latter was a principle at Bell Canoe. Those two held the rights to the design so Bell Canoe stopped manufacturing those canoes sometime after Wilson left Bell in 1999, although Bell...

I have size eleven feet and I sold my Flashfire because I did have some difficulty extracting my feet from underneath the seat. I have a Wildfire with a kneeling thwart and being one inch deeper than the Flash, I can get my feet under and back out easily.

Scheduled releases on the middle Ocoee are typically five days a week (Thursday through Monday) June through August, and weekend days in May, September, and October. Releases on the upper Ocoee are limited to weekends May through August and the first weekend in September. Most other times...

Some of the rapids have different or alternate names. Broken Nose was sometimes called Vegematic at one time, and Second Helping is now usually called Slice and Dice. Torpedo is now usually known as Cat's Pajamas and since heck's Hole is now a little tamer (and the bridge has been relocated...