The Incredible Canoe

The Incredible Canoe

I've always loved boats. I was raised in the country so I can appreciate peace and tranquility. I've always loved smooth beautiful curves, I am a man.  What offers this, several things, but I'm talking about a very old boat design, the incredible canoe.

I know kayaks are currently hot, but a kayak is a skinny covered canoe.  Kayak's are like a high fashion model while the canoe is more like a real woman.  I've spent a little time with kayaks, I like them to!

I've owned several regular boats, but pictured above is my 6th or maybe 7th canoe?  This canoe is small, 12 feet long, weighing only 33 pounds, yet it can carry my big 230 pounds and gear easily.  

If you don't already know, a more typical canoe is 15 to 18 feet, weighs 50 to 80 pounds, and may be capable of carrying up to 1,000 pounds.  (I'm talking about better quality canoes, not the junk you find in most retail stores.)

I like to fish, and I've tried several small bass boats equipped with many extra gizmo's. Once you get it all out on the water and you get it all working correctly, a bass boat is very comfortable, efficient, and great. BUT! Such boats need a lot of care and feeding, they are high maintenance. 

I've tried electric and gas motors on boats and canoes. Most boats are hard to push through the water, they need a motor, and for longer distances a motor's nice on a canoe.  But a motor can weigh as much as the entire canoe, it can make a canoe awkward, the motor gets clogged in weeds, it doesn't work very well in shallow water...

Paddling is skill and art, beauty and tranquility, work and exercise... paddling is therapeutic, much like sitting in a rocking chair or on a porch swing, unless you get in a hurry.  Soon you learn to like the simplicity, the dependable self-sufficiency, you take pride in gliding among the stumps or pads only using enough stroke to turn slightly, to glide past with only a ripple of sound.

I like most boats of different shapes and sizes, but no other boat stirs me as much as a beautiful graceful canoe.