I am absolutely thrilled to share this 17’4” x 34” tandem canoe built from our plans by Steve and his wife in Yellowknife, Canada. This was designed as a fast day tripper / light camper rather than a heavy cargo hauler. Here’s what Steve has to say about it:
“Finished up yesterday , and took it out for a paddle last night. Maiden voyage went great, paddles really well, comfortable , seat heights and locations seem spot on.
Finished weight before adding thermarest and pool noodles was 46.5lbs. I think the rope / noodles and mats are around 3lbs… so just under 50lbs total. It feels really light to lift and carry around. We are thrilled with how it turned out. The yellow totally pops and looks amazing in the water.
We took the canoe out again this weekend and the handling is great. It tracks straight easily and isn’t too challenging to turn. The length yields lots of different options for paddling and redistributing weight. It seems fairly quick , and we easily achieved 7km/h with little effort. Although we were travelling downstream and down wind .
I was pleasantly surprised with how comfortable the combination of pool noodles and thermares makes the interior . Most canoes are a hard surface , obviously , whether plastic , fibreglass or wood . But the softer materials used on the interior make for comfortable kneeling, sitting etc.
I had it out all day today solo, and it’s a joy to fish out of. At the end of the day I sunk it by the shore to test it . And it floated no problem full of water . I flipped it while swimming which dumped 75% of the water , then crawled in unassisted. So I was pretty happy to test all that out too.
It’s so nice to get up against tricky shorelines and be able to maneuver it wherever I want , jump out and pull it onto shore so easily , given how light it is.
Our friends have all been quite impressed so far.”
Really nice work on this build. Thanks for sharing Steve.
___
This post was originally featured on our Instagram feed.
See the original post and discussion here.
