Check out this latest student built Tandem Canoe. 16’3” x 36” 49lbs (complete) with an all yellow cedar frame. Rory did an incredible job building, but also documenting his entire build on our Student Builds Blog. (I’ve included some screenshots below.)
“We got this boat out on the water over the weekend for the first time. It has squarely checked all the design-goal boxes for me! We paddled, tandem (plus a kid) for 2+ hours in 3-7kts wind. It tracks well but is still nicely maneuverable. I feel the boat as-is has a great balance in rocker. Hull stability feels just right. Its not quite as stable side-side as typical commercial tripping boats but we both liked that. Stability was also not unnerving for our 4-year old son. Secondary stability is excellent.
I found the boat really responsive to steering input as well when needed to negotiate tight spots around shallow rocks but it’s very easy to track well. The boat handled the ~7kts winds very well, I recall being surprised how little wind affected it was turning the bow in and out of a headwind. The hull feels fast and quite effortless paddling. We both remarked on how fast it felt for the amount of effort we were putting into paddling.
We hit some sizeable big boat wake waves ~2ft and smallish chop, rolling swell etc. no issue at all side-on or on the bow. The bow rode up some of the biggest wake waves and stayed nice and stiff. The frame doesn’t feel to have more than ¼” of flexibility in rocker flexing the ends on a dock etc. which is excellent.
I took the boat out for a few minutes solo afterwards, both flat and heeled over a lot while paddling. Seems to have very good secondary stability. The lightweight hull is amazing paddling solo and it really comes alive. Fine tuning my body position made the difference between being able to spin the boat quickly and tracking nicely. Being so light it was very fun to paddle both tandem and solo.
The instruction has been absolutely excellent, and I’m happily VERY surprised with the results.”
Again I want to thank Rory for the significant time he put into documenting his process on our website. Seriously it’s worth checking out.
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This post was originally featured on our Instagram feed.
See the original post and discussion here.
