I'm debating on what to do with this canoe. If I hadn't been paddling it for 60 years, I suspect I wouldn't even be thinking about it...
Around 1963, Dad happened on two canoes that were "excess" to a bunch of canoes bought by some unknown camp. He took one and a friend took the other. We kept it at our NY cabin, my sisters and I learned to paddle in it and used it a lot (lake flatwater only) until we gave up the cabin. Dad took it with him when he moved to NH but gave it to me some years later when he bought a modern Kevlar canoe... and when I returned to the cabin community years later I brought it with me, back to the same lake where its mate still resides. But having just finished the restoration of a much nicer canoe, I really don't need the old blue monster. It's 15' long, 36" beam, very stable, and heavy (though I haven't actually weighed it).
One winter when I was around 14 years old, we took it home to try paddling on some local rivers. Stored on sawhorses on the patio for the winter, a wind blew it off and against a tree, cracking the hull across the middle. 14 year old me said, "I can fix this!" and I did, with a very crude and ugly fiberglass job. I should be embarrassed over the workmanship, but it's held up for 50 years... I would have painted it, but I wanted to paint it green and Mom wanted to keep it light blue, so it never got painted.
Then some time later a buddy and I foolishly tried to run a whitewater stream with it. It's heavy and tracks straight (making it a favorite in 4 man event in the annual canoe regatta), but doesn't turn so good, so we plowed into a rock. Hit hard enough what my buddy who was in the front ended up in the water and I who was in the back ended up in the front of the boat. That must have been around 30 years ago.
It's pretty beat up elsewhere, and one of the old fiberglass patches is finally peeling off, but it still floats.
Fixing it doesn't seem too difficult: Fill the gouges with filled epoxy or resin, redo the peeling fiberglass patch and smooth out the intact ones, and paint it (and fix or replace the cracked aluminum seats)... but the last thing I need is another project, and I really don't have a place to keep it. It'd be a good loaner but I have access to plenty of other canoes owned by my neighbors. But if my kids or neighbors don't want it (I'd kinda like to see it stay on the same lake), then I'll have to decide what to do with it.
Around 1963, Dad happened on two canoes that were "excess" to a bunch of canoes bought by some unknown camp. He took one and a friend took the other. We kept it at our NY cabin, my sisters and I learned to paddle in it and used it a lot (lake flatwater only) until we gave up the cabin. Dad took it with him when he moved to NH but gave it to me some years later when he bought a modern Kevlar canoe... and when I returned to the cabin community years later I brought it with me, back to the same lake where its mate still resides. But having just finished the restoration of a much nicer canoe, I really don't need the old blue monster. It's 15' long, 36" beam, very stable, and heavy (though I haven't actually weighed it).
One winter when I was around 14 years old, we took it home to try paddling on some local rivers. Stored on sawhorses on the patio for the winter, a wind blew it off and against a tree, cracking the hull across the middle. 14 year old me said, "I can fix this!" and I did, with a very crude and ugly fiberglass job. I should be embarrassed over the workmanship, but it's held up for 50 years... I would have painted it, but I wanted to paint it green and Mom wanted to keep it light blue, so it never got painted.
Then some time later a buddy and I foolishly tried to run a whitewater stream with it. It's heavy and tracks straight (making it a favorite in 4 man event in the annual canoe regatta), but doesn't turn so good, so we plowed into a rock. Hit hard enough what my buddy who was in the front ended up in the water and I who was in the back ended up in the front of the boat. That must have been around 30 years ago.
It's pretty beat up elsewhere, and one of the old fiberglass patches is finally peeling off, but it still floats.
Fixing it doesn't seem too difficult: Fill the gouges with filled epoxy or resin, redo the peeling fiberglass patch and smooth out the intact ones, and paint it (and fix or replace the cracked aluminum seats)... but the last thing I need is another project, and I really don't have a place to keep it. It'd be a good loaner but I have access to plenty of other canoes owned by my neighbors. But if my kids or neighbors don't want it (I'd kinda like to see it stay on the same lake), then I'll have to decide what to do with it.
