After spending a day practicing maneuvers I felt reasonably confident that I could control the canoe, so the next morning Liz shuttled me a few miles upstream for a short run.
Pro tip: if you want to catch that beautiful early morning filming light, it helps to remember to bring your paddle with you. I launched anyway with just the spare which was a bit weird because I hadn’t practiced with the bent shaft. I made it work but I’m still not entirely sure how people solo with bent canoe paddles.
While I ran the upper stretch Liz drove back to get the other paddle resulting in a a comedy of errors with us missing connecting with each other, but eventually I got the other paddle and we were able to get a bit of somewhat blown out footage.
I really like how this canoe feels on the water. It’s narrow enough that the stroke is comfortable, deep enough for a mild whitewater, full enough that it doesn’t feel tippy but still soft enough in the bilge to be quick and not catch an edge in the cross currents. I set the rocker at 2 1/2 inches as a nod to the original Bell Wildfire. I think most people will want to stick with 2 inches for easier flat water tracking but with my white water background I don’t mind trading a bit of tracking for maneuverability.
I also did a little testing with my normal 40 pound week-long camping load and it didn’t feel too sluggish, but I would say that’s about the upper limit before you’d want to bump up the size a little bit. Unloaded it has a lovely nimble feel with me at 160, but still bites the water just enough to track when I want to go straight.
The nice thing about our building system is that it’s almost infinitely sizable, so this particular concept can be scaled up and down depending on the individual.
This being only my second time on moving water in a solo canoe, (the first time was yesterday) I’m encouraged by how well things went. It’s rare for me to finish any testing session without any significant criticisms. We’ll see how it holds up on flat water next week.
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