Poll: How old are you - 2026 version

[RBourg]

Celebrating my 60th birthday this Saturday 4/18 with a 7.7 mile race !

 

[tketcham]

This poll seems to be reflective of a conversation I had with a canoe/kayak retailer recently. When I went to pick the canoe up, I mentioned that it was replacing a similar canoe that's 16 lbs heavier. He chuckled and said other than kayaks, that's what's selling these days: lightweight canoes to older canoeists. I mentioned how there are fewer canoeists these days and that unfortunately many are getting too old to paddle or dying, and the sport is dying along with us. But he then said there seems to be an uptick in younger canoe buyers, the 30 to 40 year olds, so he's still optimistic. And here's a recent iteration of the poll:

 

[gumpus]

This poll seems to be reflective of a conversation I had with a canoe/kayak retailer recently. When I went to pick the canoe up, I mentioned that it was replacing a similar canoe that's 16 lbs heavier. He chuckled and said other than kayaks, that's what's selling these days: lightweight canoes to older canoeists. I mentioned how there are fewer canoeists these days and that unfortunately many are getting too old to paddle or dying, and the sport is dying along with us. But he then said there seems to be an uptick in younger canoe buyers, the 30 to 40 year olds, so he's still optimistic. And here's a recent iteration of the poll:

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I just had this exact same conversation with Bill Swift yesterday when I told him I'm looking for a light boat for the long term.

 

[Gamma1214]

Well... so far, the biggest difference I see is a much lower participation rate. While membership has probably tripled here in the past 10 years (Glenn can probably provide actual numbers), the response rate is approx. 30% lower than the original. (78 here & 113 on the old thread)
I wonder why?

Do people just check the "what's new" tab & they've missed this thread (despite it being featured)?

 

[Pseudonym]

I think the primary difference in total participation is simply that the former poll ran for a decade, before it was recently closed by Glenn, whereas this poll has only been open for a couple of weeks.

While this is certainly a specious example: if you extrapolate out 78 poll participants every two weeks for a decade... that would be 20,280 respondents. That doesn't factor for the initial surge in participation with the start of any new thread, but nonetheless, I think that if we could see the backend poll data (including timestamps) we might reasonably draw the opposite conclusion: that the user base and participation is considerably larger than it was ten years ago.

 

[Gamma1214]

Certainly a possibility, however, the original poll garnered 76 comments in the first 2 weeks (no indication of how many votes) vs 25 comments in this thread.

Hopefully, I'll remember to dig this up 10 years from now and see

 

[Glenn MacGrady]

As I pointed out in the thread on site member activity, what's clear from the 2016 poll vs. the 2026 poll is that the modal age, over the past 10 years, has moved from the 50s, skipped right over the 60s, and is now in the 70s. This suggests to me that folks interested in discussion forums about open canoes are aging out faster than they are being replaced. More specifically, I believe that is a function of declining interest in both open canoes (relative to kayaks) and in discussion forums in general.