At my graduation ceremony they read each graduate's master thesis title, and one girl literally did her 100-200 page paper on ancient Scandinavian wood canoes, like how the hell do you write over 100 pages on wood canoes
Most people don’t realize how durable a wood canvas canoe is, they assume these boats are delicate and require constant upkeep. Wooden canoes are a vital part of our history – they plied inland waterways loaded down with supplies going in and goods coming out of the woods. They traveled lakes, rivers, streams, and portages of all sizes – high water and low, rocks, log jams, and long carries over rugged terrain. These boats worked for a living, they didn’t rest in the rafters of some boat house. They ran whitewater loaded down with hundreds of pounds of supplies. Wood and canvas against rapids and rocks. The predecessors to these production boats were made of birch bark and cedar. Imagine running a rapid in a bark canoe!
We are by no means advocating a novice paddler drop a wooden canoe into whitewater and learn the hard way. The woodsmen of the early 20th century were skilled at reading a river and probably lost a few boats acquiring that skill. The decline of wood canvas canoes in favor of aluminum and fiberglass craft in the 50’s and 60’s resulted in some very bad habits that were only made worse by today’s cheap plastic boats. Simply put, if your feet stay dry while entering or exiting a canoe you’re doing it all wrong (unless you’re using a dock). Ramming a boat up on the beach and bridging the hull (bow up on land, stern in the water with air under the boat) is bad form and potentially damaging. You wouldn’t do it with an expensive Kevlar composite boat, you shouldn’t do it with a wooden hull, and you really shouldn’t even do it with plastic or metal . Light, small craft such as canoes are designed to support a load while the hull is supported by the water underneath it. Just because a plastic boat can survive being tossed to the ground from the top of a truck and then dragged across the parking lot doesn’t mean it should be treated that way. Minor damage will occur and if such abuse is repeated time and again the cumulative effect will be a ruined boat.
The art of reading a river is all but dead. Today’s recreational boaters in rental plastic have no regard for the boat and ignore what the surface of the river is telling them about obstructions. They bounce off everything. Again, more bad habits reinforced by the materials used to mold the boats and the marketing campaigns touting them as indestructible. I remember a particular Scout canoe trip into the back country of Ontario where we set up camp several days into the north woods next to a rapid sporting a boulder with a Grumman aluminum wrapper. Indestructible? Not where stupidity is involved.
Most people don’t realize how durable a wood canvas canoe is, they assume these boats are delicate and require constant upkeep. Wooden canoes are a vital part of our history – they plied inland waterways loaded down with supplies going in and goods coming out of the woods. They traveled lakes, rivers, streams, and portages of all sizes – high water and low, rocks, log jams, and long carries over rugged terrain. These boats worked for a living, they didn’t rest in the rafters of some boat house. They ran whitewater loaded down with hundreds of pounds of supplies. Wood and canvas against rapids and rocks. The predecessors to these production boats were made of birch bark and cedar. Imagine running a rapid in a bark canoe!
We are by no means advocating a novice paddler drop a wooden canoe into whitewater and learn the hard way. The woodsmen of the early 20th century were skilled at reading a river and probably lost a few boats acquiring that skill. The decline of wood canvas canoes in favor of aluminum and fiberglass craft in the 50’s and 60’s resulted in some very bad habits that were only made worse by today’s cheap plastic boats. Simply put, if your feet stay dry while entering or exiting a canoe you’re doing it all wrong (unless you’re using a dock). Ramming a boat up on the beach and bridging the hull (bow up on land, stern in the water with air under the boat) is bad form and potentially damaging. You wouldn’t do it with an expensive Kevlar composite boat, you shouldn’t do it with a wooden hull, and you really shouldn’t even do it with plastic or metal . Light, small craft such as canoes are designed to support a load while the hull is supported by the water underneath it. Just because a plastic boat can survive being tossed to the ground from the top of a truck and then dragged across the parking lot doesn’t mean it should be treated that way. Minor damage will occur and if such abuse is repeated time and again the cumulative effect will be a ruined boat.
The art of reading a river is all but dead. Today’s recreational boaters in rental plastic have no regard for the boat and ignore what the surface of the river is telling them about obstructions. They bounce off everything. Again, more bad habits reinforced by the materials used to mold the boats and the marketing campaigns touting them as indestructible. I remember a particular Scout canoe trip into the back country of Ontario where we set up camp several days into the north woods next to a rapid sporting a boulder with a Grumman aluminum wrapper. Indestructible? Not where stupidity is involved.
Most people don’t realize how durable a wood canvas canoe is, they assume these boats are delicate and require constant upkeep. Wooden canoes are a vital part of our history – they plied inland waterways loaded down with supplies going in and goods coming out of the woods. They traveled lakes, rivers, streams, and portages of all sizes – high water and low, rocks, log jams, and long carries over rugged terrain. These boats worked for a living, they didn’t rest in the rafters of some boat house. They ran whitewater loaded down with hundreds of pounds of supplies. Wood and canvas against rapids and rocks. The predecessors to these production boats were made of birch bark and cedar. Imagine running a rapid in a bark canoe!
We are by no means advocating a novice paddler drop a wooden canoe into whitewater and learn the hard way. The woodsmen of the early 20th century were skilled at reading a river and probably lost a few boats acquiring that skill. The decline of wood canvas canoes in favor of aluminum and fiberglass craft in the 50’s and 60’s resulted in some very bad habits that were only made worse by today’s cheap plastic boats. Simply put, if your feet stay dry while entering or exiting a canoe you’re doing it all wrong (unless you’re using a dock). Ramming a boat up on the beach and bridging the hull (bow up on land, stern in the water with air under the boat) is bad form and potentially damaging. You wouldn’t do it with an expensive Kevlar composite boat, you shouldn’t do it with a wooden hull, and you really shouldn’t even do it with plastic or metal . Light, small craft such as canoes are designed to support a load while the hull is supported by the water underneath it. Just because a plastic boat can survive being tossed to the ground from the top of a truck and then dragged across the parking lot doesn’t mean it should be treated that way. Minor damage will occur and if such abuse is repeated time and again the cumulative effect will be a ruined boat.
The art of reading a river is all but dead. Today’s recreational boaters in rental plastic have no regard for the boat and ignore what the surface of the river is telling them about obstructions. They bounce off everything. Again, more bad habits reinforced by the materials used to mold the boats and the marketing campaigns touting them as indestructible. I remember a particular Scout canoe trip into the back country of Ontario where we set up camp several days into the north woods next to a rapid sporting a boulder with a Grumman aluminum wrapper. Indestructible? Not where stupidity is involved.
Most people don’t realize how durable a wood canvas canoe is, they assume these boats are delicate and require constant upkeep. Wooden canoes are a vital part of our history – they plied inland waterways loaded down with supplies going in and goods coming out of the woods. They traveled lakes, rivers, streams, and portages of all sizes – high water and low, rocks, log jams, and long carries over rugged terrain. These boats worked for a living, they didn’t rest in the rafters of some boat house. They ran whitewater loaded down with hundreds of pounds of supplies. Wood and canvas against rapids and rocks. The predecessors to these production boats were made of birch bark and cedar. Imagine running a rapid in a bark canoe!
We are by no means advocating a novice paddler drop a wooden canoe into whitewater and learn the hard way. The woodsmen of the early 20th century were skilled at reading a river and probably lost a few boats acquiring that skill. The decline of wood canvas canoes in favor of aluminum and fiberglass craft in the 50’s and 60’s resulted in some very bad habits that were only made worse by today’s cheap plastic boats. Simply put, if your feet stay dry while entering or exiting a canoe you’re doing it all wrong (unless you’re using a dock). Ramming a boat up on the beach and bridging the hull (bow up on land, stern in the water with air under the boat) is bad form and potentially damaging. You wouldn’t do it with an expensive Kevlar composite boat, you shouldn’t do it with a wooden hull, and you really shouldn’t even do it with plastic or metal . Light, small craft such as canoes are designed to support a load while the hull is supported by the water underneath it. Just because a plastic boat can survive being tossed to the ground from the top of a truck and then dragged across the parking lot doesn’t mean it should be treated that way. Minor damage will occur and if such abuse is repeated time and again the cumulative effect will be a ruined boat.
The art of reading a river is all but dead. Today’s recreational boaters in rental plastic have no regard for the boat and ignore what the surface of the river is telling them about obstructions. They bounce off everything. Again, more bad habits reinforced by the materials used to mold the boats and the marketing campaigns touting them as indestructible. I remember a particular Scout canoe trip into the back country of Ontario where we set up camp several days into the north woods next to a rapid sporting a boulder with a Grumman aluminum wrapper. Indestructible? Not where stupidity is involved.
Most people don’t realize how durable a wood canvas canoe is, they assume these boats are delicate and require constant upkeep. Wooden canoes are a vital part of our history – they plied inland waterways loaded down with supplies going in and goods coming out of the woods. They traveled lakes, rivers, streams, and portages of all sizes – high water and low, rocks, log jams, and long carries over rugged terrain. These boats worked for a living, they didn’t rest in the rafters of some boat house. They ran whitewater loaded down with hundreds of pounds of supplies. Wood and canvas against rapids and rocks. The predecessors to these production boats were made of birch bark and cedar. Imagine running a rapid in a bark canoe!
We are by no means advocating a novice paddler drop a wooden canoe into whitewater and learn the hard way. The woodsmen of the early 20th century were skilled at reading a river and probably lost a few boats acquiring that skill. The decline of wood canvas canoes in favor of aluminum and fiberglass craft in the 50’s and 60’s resulted in some very bad habits that were only made worse by today’s cheap plastic boats. Simply put, if your feet stay dry while entering or exiting a canoe you’re doing it all wrong (unless you’re using a dock). Ramming a boat up on the beach and bridging the hull (bow up on land, stern in the water with air under the boat) is bad form and potentially damaging. You wouldn’t do it with an expensive Kevlar composite boat, you shouldn’t do it with a wooden hull, and you really shouldn’t even do it with plastic or metal . Light, small craft such as canoes are designed to support a load while the hull is supported by the water underneath it. Just because a plastic boat can survive being tossed to the ground from the top of a truck and then dragged across the parking lot doesn’t mean it should be treated that way. Minor damage will occur and if such abuse is repeated time and again the cumulative effect will be a ruined boat.
The art of reading a river is all but dead. Today’s recreational boaters in rental plastic have no regard for the boat and ignore what the surface of the river is telling them about obstructions. They bounce off everything. Again, more bad habits reinforced by the materials used to mold the boats and the marketing campaigns touting them as indestructible. I remember a particular Scout canoe trip into the back country of Ontario where we set up camp several days into the north woods next to a rapid sporting a boulder with a Grumman aluminum wrapper. Indestructible? Not where stupidity is involved.
Most people don’t realize how durable a wood canvas canoe is, they assume these boats are delicate and require constant upkeep. Wooden canoes are a vital part of our history – they plied inland waterways loaded down with supplies going in and goods coming out of the woods. They traveled lakes, rivers, streams, and portages of all sizes – high water and low, rocks, log jams, and long carries over rugged terrain. These boats worked for a living, they didn’t rest in the rafters of some boat house. They ran whitewater loaded down with hundreds of pounds of supplies. Wood and canvas against rapids and rocks. The predecessors to these production boats were made of birch bark and cedar. Imagine running a rapid in a bark canoe!
We are by no means advocating a novice paddler drop a wooden canoe into whitewater and learn the hard way. The woodsmen of the early 20th century were skilled at reading a river and probably lost a few boats acquiring that skill. The decline of wood canvas canoes in favor of aluminum and fiberglass craft in the 50’s and 60’s resulted in some very bad habits that were only made worse by today’s cheap plastic boats. Simply put, if your feet stay dry while entering or exiting a canoe you’re doing it all wrong (unless you’re using a dock). Ramming a boat up on the beach and bridging the hull (bow up on land, stern in the water with air under the boat) is bad form and potentially damaging. You wouldn’t do it with an expensive Kevlar composite boat, you shouldn’t do it with a wooden hull, and you really shouldn’t even do it with plastic or metal . Light, small craft such as canoes are designed to support a load while the hull is supported by the water underneath it. Just because a plastic boat can survive being tossed to the ground from the top of a truck and then dragged across the parking lot doesn’t mean it should be treated that way. Minor damage will occur and if such abuse is repeated time and again the cumulative effect will be a ruined boat.
The art of reading a river is all but dead. Today’s recreational boaters in rental plastic have no regard for the boat and ignore what the surface of the river is telling them about obstructions. They bounce off everything. Again, more bad habits reinforced by the materials used to mold the boats and the marketing campaigns touting them as indestructible. I remember a particular Scout canoe trip into the back country of Ontario where we set up camp several days into the north woods next to a rapid sporting a boulder with a Grumman aluminum wrapper. Indestructible? Not where stupidity is involved.
