Do you have any pics of your Northern Light? All the ones I've seen have separate holes in the gunwales for the rear thwart and rear slider seat drops, but there's only one set of holes in mine. The bolt goes through the thwart, then the seat drop and slider rail. I need to find a longer bolt than the 6 inchers I ordered or shave the drops down an inch.
That was a long time ago, like 35mm slide film days.
My NL15 had a stern thwart a few inches behind the drops for the slider, and a bow thwart in front of the drops for the front of the slider drops, just as shown on the Old Town catalog photo.
I did not care much for the sliding seat construction or position. Having the aluminum slider brackets grinding against the wooden slider rails was not kind to the rails, although the simple friction of metal bracket against wood rail kept the sliding seat locked in position.
The entire sliding seat/yoke combination seemed oddly positioned, perhaps more with an eye towards yoke balance than sliding seat trim efficacy. The canoe was balanced properly with the seat/yoke slide all the way forward, but I would have preferred to have more travel aft on the sliding seat.
One picayune complaint; I never got used to portaging the canoe stern first, as often as not walking down to the water with the canoe on my shoulders and inadvertently setting it in the water facing the opposite direction desired.
Even loading it on the roof racks from the rear of the van; stern forward just seems wrong.
If you cut down the drops to go under the thwart your seat will still be hung the same depth. Alternatively, and maybe better, cut down the stern thwart, drill new holes and install that thwart a few inches behind the drops for the slider rails.
I did not like having the stern thwart on the Wilderness positioned 3 inches behind the edge of the (fixed) seat frame and moved it back a couple inches. Having the stern thwart directly above the back edge of the seat with the slider would be even worse, preventing the seat from being functional if slid all the way back.
That seems a lot of complaints about a canoe I did well buying (trading) and selling. I saw a newspaper ad for
24 foot kevlar canoe $125. Thinking that was a typo and it was really a 14 footer I called. Nope, 24 feet long. I drove home like I stole it.
A Sawyer Saber. Completely useless to me, I was not racing then. I traded the Saber to a Texas Water Safari race team for the pristine Northern Lights, and later sold the NL for the stupidly low price of $500. The buyer drove away like
he stole it.
