Shh! Don't Tell My Wife!

L

Larry Eckart

Well-known member
Guys,
Instead of watching television, I enjoy both educational videos on YouTube and scrolling through Craigslist, just for the heck of it.

Sometimes, you stumble across "items" on Craigslist that are too good to pass up. And if that "item" just happens to be another boat, well, so be it.

As I get older, now 63, I see myself frequenting small water more in the future than big water. To that end I purchased a Grumman 13' canoe this past spring. Great boat. It will serve me well now and in the future. I can use it solo or with a companion, paddling or with a motor.

But it is aluminum and therefore noisy when floating small streams for ducks.

So when I saw a used Old Town 119 for a good price, it seemed a great fit to add to the collection.

The pics didn't insert where I wanted them, but here is the order of the photos:

1) Here is the boat in the camo color:

2) The first thing I did was take off the awful seat that comes with the boat. This contraption looks like some GM engineer from the 1970's was hired to use left over material on a boat seat. It is the least aesthetically pleasing seat I have seen.


3) That leaves me with a nice clean look and a boat that is 7 pound lighter. The weight is now in the low 40's. That's great.


4) I will use this seat which I used years ago in my Hoefgen duck boat. I can move it forward and back according to my load. And it looks more like it belongs with the boat than the original.


My wife doesn't know, but she suspects a rat, er... boat since I told her I was going out to look at "something." She is a good woman and knows that I am stricken with an incurable disease. That's why I come to this site, to gather with my brothers who also are in need of recovery from and support for our addiction to... boats!

Blessings,
Larry View attachment IMG_1480.JPGView attachment IMG_1481.JPGView attachment IMG_1479.JPGView attachment IMG_1482.JPG
 
Larry, I think we are kindred souls, except that I prefer my yard sale canoes a little larger.

Just passed one on someone's lawn on my way home from grocery store. Dee Dee saw my roving eye and felt the car slow down, and informed me that I was dead if another canoe came home.
 
I have had an Old Town 119 for over 20 years. Incredible boats! This buck was harvested this season during primitive rifle here in SC on WMA land. No better way to chase deer than with a canoe or a pirogue! I have lost count of the number of animals harvested using this canoe and that modified old climber.

If you want to get rid of that seat you removed from your Old Town let me know what you'd like for it. I can use it in another rig.
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Good morning, Larry~

Congratulations on the new vessel. I have never used one - but I "restored" (patched up, really) a Discovery 158 last month. If it helps, you can tell your wife I truly do not know how many canoes I have - but it's north of 10.

I have not paddled my Discovery yet - but my gunning partners have. It, too, has molded seats. Probably OK if you have 2 guys and both are facing forward - but not so good when you're solo and want to paddle facing the "back bow".....

All the best,

SJS
 
I was restrained last night, but I'm grouchy this morning, so forgive a rant about those Old Town molded seats.

Old Town Canoe is a great company with a long and proud tradition that dates back to the days literally to the days when canoes were made out of birchbark. They helped pioneer wood canvas canoes, did a brilliant job of marketing fine wooden canoes in the late 19th and early and mid 20th centuries, then expanded into fine fiberglass canoes. If you ever find a decent Old Town Canadienne fiberglass canoe at a yard sale or in Craigs List, get it. They are some of the best lake paddlers ever made.

Old Town among the first to adopt Royalex to make highly servicable plastic canoes beginning in the 1970's. Their Tripper, Camper, Penobscot 16 and Penobscot 17 Royalex canoes were great boats at a reasonable price. The Tripper XL in Royalex is one of the finest poling canoes ever made and can carry enough gear to support a small invasion.

Even when they moved to cut costs and started making rotomolded plastic canoes that were a lot heavier than Royalex, their canoes still paddled well. Their various Discovery boats, while heavy, are highly serviceable. I especially like the Disco 16'9", which is a very similar hull to the Tripper. If I were looking to outfit a canoe tripping business that didn't involve too many trips with long portages, that's what I'd buy--though the 91 pound weight for a 16' canoe is nuts.

All of those boats had servicable seats--cane, nylon, wood slats, even plastic. The various iterations involved changes in manufacturing methods, and design to various price points, but the product was always servicable boat. That ended with the adoption of those god-awful roto-molded directional seats. My biggest complaint about those is that they make it impossible to paddle a tandem canoe "backwards" from the "bow" seat. It was the first time Old Town put price point and marketing above making a functional boat, and it was the beginning of the end of Old Town's production of quality canoes.

The good news is that wood frame cane or nylon seats are available from a variety of sources, and if you get one of their Discovery canoes, replace the crappy plastic seats with something funtional, and can stand the ridiculously heavy weight, they are still nice paddling hulls.
 
Larry - Good luck with your new find and explaining how you just couldn't pass up such a get find!. I understand your addiction completely.

I was just told by a "friend" about another boat that I might interest me and even though I'm not "really" in the market for another hole in the water, I just may go check it out for informational purposes.

Joe
 
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Roy,
I'll use both. A 260 Bending Branches light aluminum kayak paddle, a traditional paddle when I prefer that, and then for sneaking on ducks, a small wooden otter tail style paddle that slips in and out of the water noiselessly.

Larry
 
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