Hello Everyone,

So, I will get to my question in a bit. However, here is some info on me. I love nature and have spent my 30 years on this planet designing my life to be more in nature. I am now a geologist by profession, I teach primitive skills and tinker as my hobbies. I have made a dugout canoe once before and it worked as a device that could float and be paddled. It wasn't much better than a piece of wood that could float and I sit in...

I grew up in Western North Carolina, where I still live. My dad got an Old Town (I Think) Penobscot 174 or maybe it was 164 back around 1995. That was the boat I learned rivers on. It has been my canoe for almost a decade now. It does not have any of the writing that was on it, so I might have the wrong model. The longest trip I have done was 9 days with my dog and gear. I can Solo it pretty well day after day on the rivers we have in Western North Carolina. The Penobscot is not the best canoe for what I do. But, I have soloed a class III-IV rapids (the FB9 rapid - French Broad Section 9) in the Old Town. So I am probably an above-average canoeist.

MY GOAL/QUESTION
I am now trying to begin a HUGE project for me and I need help! My question is about what dimensions I should build my dream canoe????
I want to still be able to run rapids and want control of the boat as a solo-boater. However, I still want to be able to do week trips or take someone else out with me. So I want something long enough for room for gear or another person but at the same time something small enough for whitewater classes I-III (If the river allows room).
SO what styles/ dimensions of a canoe for...
- A guy 6ft 5 in, 250 lbs AND another person or weeks worth of gear (SO maybe 600-800 lbs to be safe?)
- Can Handle Class I-III rapids
- Can be handled SOLO
*This will be a wooden canoe!
*Is this possible?
Sorry for the length of the post, please feel free to ask any questions!

You may well spend the next 30 years chasing the tail of the mythical "it'll do everything" canoe. I'd suggest getting more on the water time in a much larger variety of canoes and canoeing situations, to see and feel what works where.
No intention of being harsh or overly critical. But I did start paddling in the 1970's, been in many types and still have not found an acceptable solution, and sure I'm not alone is this opinion.You would save time and frustration to build a personal fleet of what works best for you.

butthead

Been there, done that. There really were no solo whitewater canoes until maybe the Mad River ME. Open boat folks were soloing tandems a lot. The proliferation of solo open boats in the 80s and 90s really helped a lot and there were some great designers with good ideas.

Anyway, you being a big guy a small tandem for a solo has worked well for you and will continue to do that. You being a big guy means that when used as a tandem the boat needs to be pretty big.

Looking at the plans that are out there, I think you would do well to build a 16'Prospector. Deep and lots of rocker, more rocker than your Penobscot anyway. Paddling it solo in the wind will be a struggle given the depth. However, with your weight and a moderate outfit you would do fine soloing on a long trip. With a partner you might be restricted to 10-14 days unless you have a real lightweight outfit. My partner and I weight in at 500# and with a 120# 10 day outfit we did just fine in the 16'Prospector.

After you pick a hull to build you need to consider what kind of lay up will survive class III mishaps. I've seen wooden canoes, both wood/canvas and woodstrip/composite run class III successfully, but if you are less than successful on a run how you built your boat becomes critical. Get all the builders on the forum to weigh in. I envision less pretty and more kevlar and s-glass fabric(not clear, not pretty).

You know there is a builders forum here, too.. Looking forward to this discussion!

PrimativeProfessor: "*Is this possible?"

No.

If you want a better time day-tripping whitewater in a solo boat, there are lots of good options. If you want to haul 800# of stuff on flat water, there are also lots of good options. No canoe expert is going to tell you that one canoe that can do both of these things reasonably well. If you're soloing class III in a Penobscot, it really doesn't matter what you build, YOU will get it where you're going.

2 canoes > 1 canoe. If I was selling you canoes out of my current livery, I'd suggest my Mad River Explorer for the solo and downriver work, and my 18'6" Wenonah Odyssey for the bigger trips where portages are more of a concern than rocks. With plenty of weight in the front you could probably handle the Odyssey on flat water reasonably well alone, but it is far from ideal. I'd never take a rocker-less kevlar boat like that down a river, however. If you wanted to bounce off of rocks with 800# of gear, well, you've got the Penobscot already. I doubt portage weight is much of a concern for a person your size.

Get out and test paddle a variety of canoes before you build one! Flat bottomed boats feel VERY different from V or shallow arch bottomed boats. Figure out what you like! The benefit of making one yourself is you can take a hull shape you really like and make it a little bigger, much like how the 38 Special came to be, IIRC it is simply a NW Merlin that was expanded 3.8% in every direction.

CALL around! Northwest Canoe is an excellent resource! Any mom and pop paddle shop is going to have valuable opinions. I foresee many people pushing you towards a Prospector, which has one of the best reputations for all-around performance and classic lines, but keep in mind that many companies have put the word Prospector on a canoe before, and they are not all the same.

Good luck, I hope you build many canoes!