Poll: How old were you when you got YOUR OWN first canoe (and what was it)?

[LarrySw45]

77 power! I'm with you. And one of my sons was born on 7-7-77.

Hey Glenn,
I usually go on a Boundary Waters trip with a young guy. He's only 72. :>
We've celebrated his birthday for the last 3 years in the BW.
Larry

 

[Ruttrowe]

Late 40’s. After I totaled a 17’ grumman in a first for me white water trip with a buddy I picked up a used OT Discovery 174, slides over rocks much better than the grumman. Since then I’ve replaced the Grumman which stays on the pond now! I have also acquired a OT tripper an OT Discovery 164 and a Wenonah moccasin and now the 1958-59 Old Town Guide wood canvas that is a project. It’s a disease, I now own 8 canoes, with the 2 coleman 15’s at our rentals.

 

[Rippy]

In Boy Scouts our troupe took some weekend canoe trips and a couple of week long trips during the years I was a member. We used aluminium canoes. The last trip was to the boundary waters in 73. I was 15 at the time and it made quite an impression. I always dreamed of going back. Flash forward to 1992. It was late winter and between cabin fever and my job I was feeling stressed out so I took a drive to Starks in Prairie Du Chien Wiss, about 90 miles from where I live. I didn't have anything in mind, I just needed to get out. Well I noticed that they had Old towns on sale and got a brain storm to buy one and take our family of three to the BWCA. I literally made the 90 mile trip home in an hour and fifteen minutes excited to tell my wife the good news that I was going to buy a canoe. She said she was happy for me but she wasn't interested in going canoeing herself. (sad trombone music here). Well I went back to Starks and bought my first canoe anyway thinking she would change her mind. It was a disco 169 for $369. Not knowing any better I thought I was in heaven. At 34 I didn't have trouble getting the 85 lb tub on my shoulders. I hadn't discovered portage pads yet so I would jog with it so I could put it down sooner. At 65 I now feel good if I can port my 48 lb boat at a walking pace. The disco was very stable which was a good thing for my novice crew, but the 85 lb weight and the one size fits all roto molded seats got old. In 94 I bought a OT Camper, my first royalex boat. That was followed by a OT Penobscot 17 in 98.
These days I have a Nova Craft Pal to solo trip with, although it hasn't seen a trip for years. For day trips on local rivers I have a NC Bob Special.

 

[SouthernKevlar]

While in college back in 1982 I paddled a friend's C1 decked whitewater canoe down a Class one river with a group in open canoes. I ended up buying the canoe, which I was told that it was a Hahn designed slalom canoe built by the Georgia Canoe Club in the mid-70's. Talk about a crash course in strokes, paddle control and swimming; that boat would turn if you looked sideways, wouldn't go straight on a bet and would turn turtle with the slightest provocation! It was fiberglass with a foam pedestal, thigh straps made from auto seat belt webbing and weighed in the mid 40s if memory serves right. I paddled it for the next half dozen or so years on everything from slow moving rivers up to class 4 whitewater. Soon after I also got a Perception Mirage kayak to use as my creek boat because you didn't have to repair it after running rocky Appalachian creeks, but I still loved the C-1. We whitewater C-boaters used to say "Half the paddle, twice the paddler".
The first open canoe that I purchased was a Coleman 16' in 1985. I learned a lot from that canoe. Mostly I learned what a canoe should not be.
Thus the fever began. I have (at last count) owned 29 varieties of canoes and kayaks since I learned the joys of paddling.

 

[MyKneesHurt]

The first canoe I owned was the first canoe I built, somewhere in my mid 30s. It was a terrible canoe. I sawed it in thirds after I built a better one.

 

[Nick Pending]

I was 22 when I got my first canoe, which I bought outright, brand new. I started canoeing earlier, but borrowed or rented boats before getting my own. I wanted to do a long canoe trip after graduating from college, so ordered a custom fiberglass one from a builder in Chicago shortly before I got out of school, and took delivery in late July, '71. It's a 17 foot "Canadien" from the Chicagoland Canoe Base, now defunct as has happened to too many canoe shops. Old Town Canoe licensed the design from the owner sometime around 1970 and sold them for several years. I understand the design influenced their Tripper model but don't know that for sure. They were fairly similar.

The Canadien was fairly expensive as canoes went for at the time, over $400, which is of course nothing nowdays, but a standard Grumman 17 footer was only $255 in 1971 if I remember right. I used that boat heavily up into the early 1990s and had to fix it several times as the construction wasn't any great shakes. I considered molding it but ended up replacing it instead.

It sat suspended in the rafters of my barn for about 30 years, taken down early this year and turned into a planter, a large garden container now filled with over a cubic yard of soil and (producing) strawberry plants. It was a great boat, still would be, but there are newer designs that are even better, if only for more specific paddling uses. I'm not expecting it to ever get used again. Would have to seal the dozen or so quarter-inch holes I drilled in the bottom first. Then new gunnels, seats, thwarts, deckplates. I'm too lazy now.

 

[tketcham]

Also, tell us what kind of canoe it was, whether you liked it, whether you still have it, and if you no longer have it, what happened to it.

I bought my first canoe when was in my early 30's, a well-abused Blue Hole OCA tandem whitewater canoe. A heavy Royalex beast that must have weighed 80 pounds. It had been wrapped around a rock in a rapid so there was a sizeable crease in the hull with bent and warped gunnels. But I installed a saddle, knee pads and thigh straps and paddled that canoe solo for a few years before buying a solo whitewater canoe, a Dagger/Clipper Genesis. The OCA also did duty as a family tandem canoe for a couple of years until I bought a Kevlar Wenonah Odyssey, which still gets used 35 years later. That OCA was even paddled by two friends in a multi-event race one year. I warned them that it was not a good canoe for what they needed but they were desperate for a boat. I don't think they had the slowest time on the river but they cursed that canoe for years after.

Added: While I can't say that I ever liked the OCA, it served its purpose and by paddling it on whitewater and flatwater, both tandem and solo, I figured out what I wanted, and more importantly didn't want, in a canoe. I kept it around for a while as a loaner canoe and sold it for $75.

 

[Cookannapurna]

19 years old. I saved for 3 years to buy a Wenonoah sundowner.

 

[Sedges]

I was 24, 1976. Chestnut Pal. Actually 3 people cooperatively made the purchase and shared the canoe. We went to the shop to purchse a Mad River Explorer and found the Chestnut and were smitten. I ended up buying out the other shares over the next few years. It was a great boat to paddle, but the quality of the materials was really poor. Toward the end of Chestnut I think they were putting all the ribs and planking that had been rejected over the years into the last canoes they manufactured. The ribs and planking were full of knots and lots of severe grain run out. Any little bump caused damage. Still, I used it hard and always figured I'd buy a better W/C. I didn't purchase another canoe(used MR Independence) until 2016 as I was building everything I paddled in wood strip.

 

[sailsman63]

I was mid-late teens, can't remember exact age anymore (Probably over 18, because I registered the boat in my name with no need for weird paperwork.)

This was a self-built cedar strip canoe, no particular design. I lofted it myself based on what I understood about canoe design at the time. (Not much.)



She was wide and high volume, and like most first-time strip builders, I overbuilt the gunwales by a wide margin.

Had fun with her, but in the end, too big a boat. (This has been an ongoing thing with me...) I sold her in 2017 to make shop space and fund the build that I documented here as "The Experiment.)

 

[Dana]

My first canoe was the family canoe that I first paddled when I was 5. It was a very early fiberglass canoe that weighed over 100 lbs. It stayed at the lake where we had a cabin. When my parents moved to New Hampshire Dad bought a new Kevlar canoe so he gave the old fiberglass monster to me. When I found my way back to the same lake and a cabin of our own with my own family some years later the canoe came back with me, where it still resides today. I just need to decide what to do with it now that I have my newly restored Mad River canoe which weighs a lot less.

 

[dramey]

My first canoe was a 17’ Michicraft aluminum canoe with flush rivets and a shoe keel. I was around 22 years old.

 

[dutchlennart]

The first was a mad river quest. Bought second third of more hand.
Second i think home build stichting and glue osprey.
Bought and sold a number. Now there are 6.

 

[Simuliumvenustum]

My first canoe was a 17' Seda Wanderer, which I purchased at age 26 while in graduate school about 1980. I recently sold it to my friend's son.

 

[billconner]

A used Souris River Q17 in 2010, at age 58.

 

[Gamma1214]

I'm not sure how old I was but I think it was late 30s or early 40s. My brother-in-law gave us a Wenonah Jensen 18 that had belonged to his father-in-law. It has seen very little use during my ownership and spent a decade or so just sitting under a tarp in the back yard. It now hangs in the carport and I'm thinking of gifting it to my nephew (it was his Grandpa's boat) to free up storage space for future builds..

 

[kahel]

I was 61 when I bought my first used canoe.
It was a OldTown 164k.

.

 

[Okraman]

Got our 1st canoe when I was about 30. It was a 17’ Coleman. I bought it from a friend. If I remember correctly, I paid him a $125. I don’t think it had ever been in the water. The good thing about it, was it was roomy, durable and ours. We could go where we wanted, when we wanted. We had a Volkswagen Campmobile and we could put the canoe on top and off we’d go.

 

[Okraman]

Got our 1st canoe when I was about 30. It was a 17’ Coleman. I bought it from a friend. If I remember correctly, I paid him a $125. I don’t think it had ever been in the water. The good thing about it, was it was roomy, durable and ours. We could go where we wanted, when we wanted. We had a Volkswagen Campmobile and we could put the canoe on top and off we’d go.

Here is a picture of the VW Campmobile referenced in my previous post.