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Old Town Canoe

Started by firefighter ontheside, September 27, 2022, 11:02:18 PM

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firefighter ontheside

I've been canoeing as long as I can remember, but I've never owned my own.  My dad has a couple that I have used a few times with my kids.  One is an old fiberglass one that dad and I floated on the local river hundreds of times growing up.  It's still a good canoe, but I wanted to have something I can take on a canoe trip in Canada one of these days.  I found someone selling an Old Town Penobscot 16 with some paddles and a few other things included.  I did a little research on the model and it is light at only 58 lbs and highly regarded by those in the know.  I will be going to pick it up on Thursday morning.  I just have to find a place to store it.  It will probably go in dads barn at first, but I will figure out something where I can keep it at my house.  Ever since I spent 2 summers working in the Boundary Waters and Quetico Park of Ontario I have wanted a nice Old Town.  I've done numerous canoe trips in these areas, but always in a noisy aluminum canoe.  I look forward to carrying my green Old Town on my shoulders across a portage or better yet watching my son carry it.
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Southside

No idea about these days, but Old Town was always the canoe of choice. Ran a 20' Grand Laker with a 6 HP on it in all kinds of water on the St John and Allagash Rivers. Absolutely abused that boat and it never failed me.

We used to push the gunnels out with a wider spar  keep spray out FWIW. 
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SwampDonkey

Old Town has always been the canoe choice in modern times. Years ago before power dams it was the old cedar rib canvas back canoes: Chestnut (the king of canvas back), Miller, Lennon. But they are heavy canoes. Even so, my grandfather has carried them around in his younger days. I've got a 22' Miller here. Bill Miller still builds one or two  a year. His grandfather started the canoe business. Bill himself is almost 80 years old.

I just saw a trailer load of canoes the other day, most of them were Old Town on there, there were other brands.
"No amount of belief makes something a fact." James Randi

1 Thessalonians 5:21

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peakbagger

Old Town used to be the choice for canoes 40 years ago when they made them out of Royalex (the called it Oldtownar). The Tripper model was nearly indestructible, folks would wrap them around trees while white watering so the bow and stern was touching and once they got them out, they could pop them back in shape, usually the only parts damaged might be the gunnels or seats. Folks still snap them up on Craigslist and restore them. The color is all through the outer layer so scrapes can be carefully sanded and then rubbing compound is used to bring the color back. They do tend to get dragged up over the shore so the bow and stern may be worn through the outer layer but there are special Kevlar patches that can be applied. 

Subsequent owners of Old Town went to a new lower cost rotomoulded material. Its lower cost but still pretty beefy (not as beefy as the former Royalex). The big sin was they redesigned the hulls to be able to ship more of them in a truck and made them to have higher primary stability while reducing the secondary stability. If you look at a hull section of the older designs versus the newer ones, the newer ones are a far squarer section with flat floors and straight gunnels. This makes the boat sit flat on calm water and make it easier for entry and exit but far more of a handful in waves and swells. The older hulls in general were more responsive in fast water when used by skilled paddlers. The modern sections also have more wetted hull area per foot of length meaning they require more paddling effort. I long ago had a 16 foot Penobscot and when I built a new 18 foot cedar strip design based on a native american hull it was quite noticeable the reduction in effort in paddling. It was much better in swells and rough water than the Penobscot, but a bit more of handful in getting in and out.  Be careful to avoid trying some of the newer ultralight Kevlar canoes, like a Wenonah, once you try one you may never be able to go back. They are fragile but super light, fast and maneuverable. I switched over to building kayaks and never looked back but my niece loves the old cedar strip canoe I gave her for family.  

Old Towns are still superior to fiberglass and a great family canoe. No maintenance to speak of and great for lending out.  If they are going to get dragged in and out of the water over rocks, adding skid plates makes a big difference   Canoe Skid Plates - Northwest Canoe Company, Inc. 

BTW if you are a new paddler, see if you can take some paddling lessons. A few hours of instruction can really improve most folk's technique. On a long day or overnight trip it can make a big difference in fatigue. 

gspren

I made several Canadian canoe trips using a Mad River Voyager made of Royalex, thats an 18' canoe that can haul a lot and handle big water while still being relatively easy to paddle. It is currently at a canoe/kayak shop near Harrisburg PA on consignment.
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Don P

We stomped one of those ABS canoes back out when the scouts wrapped it just about tip to tip around a rock. Splinted it with saplings and paddled it out. Most of the boats were Mad River's but he had several Old Towns and there was a personal canvas one in the back being restored the whole time I worked there. The boss's car project. We got a call at the canoe shop one day, the boat renters had walked out, didn't know where they lost the boat, and it was raining when they called. I got a couple of guys in kayaks and we went looking for the boat, going around everything on the way down and meeting back up. I was finally surfing the bottom rapid waiting on everyone, we had not found it and the river was dark and rising... When I looked down, it was wrapped around the rock I was surfing  :D. I got real good with a rivet gun on rails working there. We were paddling the James in Richmond and happened across a badly wrapped aluminum boat. We rescued it and towed it out. There was an Alcoa plant at the takeout, we just left it at the back door  :D. Listening to those boats coming down the river, we called it boomalum.

Old Greenhorn

I am an occasional paddler and have a Grumman aluminum like the ones I learned on as a kid. Mostly it's ponds and lakes for us. I like the light weight (except alone in the wind :D) but don't like the noise they make with sloppy handlers.
But Don's story reminded me of recovering one once. We were doing swiftwater rescue training and our team was made up of qualified folks from 3 different departments covering the districts where we had those calls. So one Sunday we were doing  'moving swimmer recovery' rescue drills up the line in pretty strong water and there had been an aluminum canoe wrapped on a rock for over a year. The town supervisor had asked if we could assist with removal because it had become an attractive nuisance. Town highway came to assist. So this thing was under the water line in strong current and the team attached lines to the bow and over to a dual axle dump which yanked it out, mostly unpeeling it from the rock. There wasn't much left to fix when we were done. :D
As an aside, I always found those actual rescues to be a lot more dangerous than going into a burning structure. The training was sometimes (OK, often) nearly as dangerous, you can't turn down the water flow to make it 'safer' and one false move puts you in a bad spot. I got more injuries from that than almost anything else in the fire service. Several actual recues (recoveries mostly) we nearly lost a few divers and we did lose one zodiac that got wrapped up in strainers. Couldn't get that one out and the LEO's on scene shot it full of holes to make sure nobody was tempted to salvage it.
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barbender

I'm not sure what vintage the used Old Town canoe my friend bought was. He explained that he liked them because of how durable they were, and that even if wrapped around a rock you could replace the aluminum parts and it would be good to go. Then we took the freshly purchased used canoe to a stretch of white water and proceeded to wrap it around a rock, as if to prove his point. I also wrapped myself around several rocks and nearly drowned, learning the hard lesson of not trusting someone else's judgement of the water🤦‍♂️
Too many irons in the fire

Hilltop366

I've got a Old Town Appalachian use to have a Scout before that, they are the same shape except the Scout has higher sides and is heaver and tougher material. Also paddled a Mad River Freedom quite a bit too, it is a bit more of a white water canoe than the Appalachian.

The Appalachian/Scout shape is a bit better in whitewater than the Penobscot because of its wider ends and more rocker but the Penobscot will leave it behind in flat water with narrower ends and better tracking.

I have looked at those super light solo canoes but most of the rivers I travel have granite rocks that have quarts crystals sticking out of them so I would only be able to use it in lakes and flat water rivers which would be most of what I do now but they cost more than I payed for my vehicle. :D

Happy canoeing, I think you will enjoy the Penobscot.


Old Greenhorn

Quote from: barbender on September 28, 2022, 09:30:21 AM......Then we took the freshly purchased used canoe to a stretch of white water and proceeded to wrap it around a rock, as if to prove his point. I also wrapped myself around several rocks and nearly drowned, learning the hard lesson of not trusting someone else's judgement of the water🤦‍♂️
Just because you can doesn't mean you should. :D

Tom Lindtveit, Woodsman Forest Products
Oscar 328 Band Mill, Husky 350, 450, 562, & 372 (Clone), Mule 3010, and too many hand tools. :) Retired and trying to make a living to stay that way. NYLT Certified.
OK, maybe I'm the woodcutter now.
I work with wood, There is a rumor I might be a woodworker.

Southside

I said Grand Laker above, that was the square stern we use on the lake. The river canoe was an XL Tripper.
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Hilltop366

Then there was story of the guy who borrowed his BIL's new aluminum canoe (without asking) and took it to a remote backwoods camp, to get it to the camp they put it on his skidder which worked better than carrying it except he tied it to the roof and ran a rope from one end of the canoe to the back of the skidder.....it kinda wrinkled it every time the skidder turned. They just put it back after the weekend, apparently it took the guy quite a long time to figure out how his brand new aluminum canoe got those wrinkles in it.

firefighter ontheside

This Penobscot is royalex.  I see that the newer penobscots are not royalex and the way to tell them apart is that the newer ones are three digit, like 164 for 16' 4".  I would not get a canoe that weighs 90 lbs for portaging.  I would be ok carrying it now, but not when I'm older or have a bad back.

When I was working for the canoe outfitter in 1994 a group had rented Wenonahs from us.  They had pulled up to the top of some falls and did not pull the canoe up or tie it.  The next thing they knew the canoe had taken a solo trip down the falls.  The canoe got wrapped around a rock and folded in half.    They straightened it back out and patched it up with some duct tape.  Before they paddled it back home they removed an N from the side so that it spelled "We onah".  My job was driving a "tow boat" where we carried canoes and people and gear back to camp across Lake Saganaga.  I remember thinking my boss was gonna be *pithed.  I'm not sure what they paid, but those guys went home with the canoe.

Another time me and another guy had to paddle in to retrieve a an aluminum canoe that some people decided to shoot rapids in.  They wrapped it around a rock.  It tore all the way down the gunwales on both sides so they left it and paddled back out in 2 canoes instead of 3.  The other guy and myself had to do a bunch of jumping up and down in that canoe to straighten it back out.  Then we used duct tape to make it float and we towed it back out.  I remember portaging it and my head was hitting the floor of the canoe.  Good times in canoe country of MN and Ontario.

I can't wait to go back and take my boys and some friends.
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gspren

All of my Canadian canoe trips were with the Boy Scouts, I was a leader, the boys were all in aluminum canoes mostly 15' so my big Mad River hauled all the food and cooking equipment much of it in 5 gallon buckets. We did a lot of fishing and had a blast, my canoe/crew always caught the most fish and maybe it was the quietness of the Royalux but I claimed superior skill  ;D.
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barbender

I had no intentions of wrapping that canoe around a rock, should've seen the signs with the guy I went with but🤷‍♂️ I had never paddled white water before, spent a lot of time paddling lakes. I was visiting with this guy one day and he mentioned he canoed whitewater a lot. I expressed an interest in that and before you know it I had a phone call. "I'm going to pick up a couple of used royalex canoes in Ely and there's a stretch on the Vermillion River I ran last fall I think would be great. Wanna come?"
  I later learned that the stretch of water we ran goes from a Category 2 in low water to a Category 4 or 5 in high water. It was spring time, the ice had just went out and the river was angry that day my friends! I felt fortunate to have escaped with my life, I have never experienced water with that kind of power and nor do I care to ever again. 
Too many irons in the fire

barbender

 Any of you that enjoy canoeing, and enjoy a good book, would probably find the book, "The Adventures of Jack Pine Bob" a great read. The author ("Bob" I can't remember his last name😊) was a newspaper writer and editor in Ely, MN and his book is a collection of short stories about adventures he had paddling and fishing the Boundary Waters and elsewhere. 
Too many irons in the fire

Poquo

I have a Old Town Camper made of Royalex it weighs 59 pounds. It was made in 1995 , the last 2 digits of the serial number give you the year. It has floated a lot of miles on rivers in Virginia in the 27 years I have owned it. I installed a bicycle lift in my garage to lift the canoe up to the ceiling.
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firefighter ontheside

Quote from: barbender on September 28, 2022, 07:21:47 PM
Any of you that enjoy canoeing, and enjoy a good book, would probably find the book, "The Adventures of Jack Pine Bob" a great read. The author ("Bob" I can't remember his last name😊) was a newspaper writer and editor in Ely, MN and his book is a collection of short stories about adventures he had paddling and fishing the Boundary Waters and elsewhere.
I have the book.  His name was Bob Cary.
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firefighter ontheside

Poquo, I am planning to do something like that in my carport where my camper lives.  I need to lift it high to get it out of the way.
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Don P

Now I'm trying to remember the reporter who's start in journalism was a senior summer trip up to Hudson Bay... that's back in the foggy recesses  :D.

 Back around the late '70's, Coleman had another plastic boat they called Ram-Flex. It was just a skin where the abs boats had an inner and outer skin over a styrene core. The coleman required an aluminum pipe |"keel" inside to keep the plastic from oil canning. We had one in the fleet for one year. That keel was no good in whitewater. The same material was used for pack frames and I still have one, that worked. With the rotomolded comment it made me remember, most of the fleet was Perception boats ut of Liberty, SC. They were the first to do a rotomolded kayak, the Quest. I horse traded from a broken up fiberglass boat I rebuilt to a Quest, which was a tub but indestructable. About a year later they figured out how to mold much better lines and came out with the Mirage, and I did a little more trading. It was a fair boat but not having to patch all week to paddle the next weekend was nice. My boss got the hot fiberglass boat from Phoenix out of KY that year, quite a few pounds lighter and cut the water like a knife. Even in glass he didn't have to patch nearly as often as the rest of us.

We went down to the Chattooga every now and then. We were getting ready to put in on section 4 one morning and there was a lone pair of young guys getting ready to put in. A new canoe with spray decks, air bags, saddles and thigh straps, the whole setup for rolling in heavy water. If you have 2 paddlers with lots of time together. We quickly realized it was a rich boy and his friend on their first real whitewater trip... and they chose the rough section of the Deliverance river. My boss, who coached us on the line through rapids and knew every river we paddled by heart, told us to keep them inside of our group. They were swimming in the first mile and for most of the trip. They spent more time on our ropes than in their boat. We eventually got to a rapid with a keeper that supposedly has a few grapple hooks stuck in the bottom, and a sneak. We all took the sneak around the hole but the boys missed the chute and went into the keeper hole. They almost punched through but the hole grabbed them, hauled them back in and ate them. We watched as the boat tumbled end over end in the hole repeatedly, getting torn to shreds for what seemed like minutes. The spray decks came up ripped, then the air bags deflated, the end caps and seats broke out and the rails and thwarts were a wrecktangle. One paddler luckily flushed out but the other tried to stay with the boat. He was like a rat scurrying for high ground as it tumbled. Finally he and the boat flushed out and we got them to shore. There was nothing seaworthy left and we were down in the gorge but my boss pointed them to a trail to the rim and the last we saw they were carrying it out. They missed the good stuff, five falls was a couple of miles ahead.  Its an E ticket series of solid class 4-5 rapids one right after the other. The river drops, ahh, I think 45 feet in a very short distance then dumps into Lake Tugaloo and a couple of flat water miles that feels like molasses on a spent body :D.

Larry

Lots of folks in Arkansas think the Buffalo Canoe is the best.  Two reasons, its locally made by nice people, and its made from T-Formex.  T-Formex is claimed to be superior to Royalex.  I don't know, but they are really nice canoes.  I owned one but sold it as I usually kayak.  Looking for another one as a solo trip on the Buffalo River from start to end is on my bucket list.
Larry, making useful and beautiful things out of the most environmental friendly material on the planet.

We need to insure our customers understand the importance of our craft.

firefighter ontheside

You're not thinking of Charles Kuralt are ya?

I got the canoe this morning.  Has a few dings, but overall in great shape.  I can't wait to get it on the water.

T-formex is supposed to be an equivalent of royalex made by another manufacturer.  The company that made royalex was bought out and the product was discontinued.
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peakbagger

There is car wax product called NuFinish (that used to be advertised on TV) that worked pretty well in cleaning up the hull pretty quickly. I think it has got silicon on it. I expect fine rubbing compound and a separate wax job would work better but the NuFinish seemed to clean things up quick. A waxed hull makes a difference. In most cases the hulls can get pretty gritty. 

SwampDonkey

In my barn I just put up some 2 x 4's for a square bracket for each end of the canoe. Put one end into a bracket, go on in enough to clear the back end of the canoe. Lift the back up, pull the canoe into the rear bracket. Been sitting there 30 years. :D
"No amount of belief makes something a fact." James Randi

1 Thessalonians 5:21

2020 Polaris Ranger 570 to forward firewood, Husqvarna 555 XT Pro, Stihl FS560 clearing saw and continuously thinning my ground, on the side. Grow them trees. (((o)))

firefighter ontheside

Here she is floating in my front yard.  Up on the left high enough to be out of the way is where I want to store the thing.  I will put some sort of panel on the side of the carport to keep the sun from shinging on the canoe.


 

 
Woodmizer LT15
Kubota Grand L4200
Stihl 025, MS261 and MS362
2017 F350 Diesel 4WD
Kawasaki Mule 4010
1998 Dodge 3500 Flatbed

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