For pure paddling fun, there are a lot of 21st Century, high-tech alternatives to the traditional wood/canvas canoe. Carbon boats are light and stiff. Kevlar boats ditto, with the added attraction of being made from the stuff used for bullet-proof vests. Plastic boats made of Royalex or polyethylene can wrap around a submerged boulder like a piece of tin foil on a baked potato, then peel off and pop back into shape as if nothing happened.
Plastic canoe meets boulder, 1980. A wooden boat wouldn’t have fared so well.
Wooden canoes have none of these features. Anyone who’s seen the movie “Deliverance” knows that, on a whitewater river, a wooden canoe will behave more or less the same as a modern boat right up to the point where you hit a rock. Then you’d better have flotation, and maybe a quiver full of arrows.
You can’t get them any more.
For these reasons they don’t mass produce wooden boats any more. You can’t get them at Dick’s or Cabela’s, or even from Old Town, the General Motors of canoeing. If you want one, you’ll have to buy it from a collector or from one of the few wooden boat shops left. These are usually one-person operations with a multi-year waiting list. Most of them are in Canada.
One of the pleasures of boatbuilding: after the varnish dries, we toast a finished boat before it leaves the shop.
I am one of these people myself, sort of. While I don’t build new boats from scratch, I rebuild junked boats that come my way, and I repair them for people who own them. I’ve been doing it for several years as a hobby. I’ve had plenty of time, while watching varnish dry, to ponder why I, or anybody for that matter, would opt for a boat design from the 19th century when there are so many 21st century options.
Hand made. Period.
What’s to love? First, these boats, when they’re new, are breathtakingly beautiful in a way that only a hand-made wooden object can be. They radiate the warmth and life of ancient trees, hand shaped, hand finished, rubbed, caressed and cared for. Even the ones that came from a factory show the marks of careful handwork and finish. Hammer marks. Brush strokes. Hand knotted rawhide.
One thing people don’t see unless they’ve worked on one of these boats is the brass tacks that hold it together. They’re tiny; just 3/8” long, and yet they fasten cedar ribs and planks together in a way that’s both rugged and flexible. Hundreds of them, shining like gold in the wood, hammered and clinched by hand. The old timer building the hull would hold dozens of these tacks in his mouth and spit them out one at a time as he worked his way down. Once they’re all in, they’re covered with canvas and a million coats of paint, never to be seen again.
Tacks and planks of a work in progress. It looks almost alive. Because it is.
The woodwork itself is neither fancy nor fussy in most of these boats, with the exception of a few high-end models that were specifically designed, like a ’69 Mustang, for ukulele-fueled seduction. The carved seats and decks, though functional, are smoothed and varnished, and they glow. At the same time, the curves and proportions of the boat point back to a time before slide rules and sawmills, when the design was determined by the needs of the builders, the materials they had at hand, and the waters on which they traveled. And there’s a beauty in that which goes very deep.
Renewable history
The wooden boat has another advantage: it comes apart and accepts seamless patches and repairs. Its brightwork is protected by varnish that can be touched up, sanded, and recoated to look clean and smart year after year. Re-canvassing is a simple operation that restores the waterproofing and showroom shine.
This repairability can be a useful attribute, because sometimes your boat breaks in the middle of the Algonquin and you may need to fix it with duct tape, a canvas patch, and a tamarack root. On a wood/canvas boat you have a shot at getting this work done before you get eaten by a wolverine. With a damaged plastic boat, good luck.
When disassembled, old wood/canvas boats often reveal layers upon layers of these repairs, a wordless story of adventures and mishaps that have been lovingly cared for. And all the layers merge into a magical new whole when you dip a paddle in the lake.
In their natural habitat: The Wooden Canoe Heritage Association’s Annual Assembly, held in the Adirondacks every July.
To see a wooden canoe in a museum or, if you’re lucky, on the water, is one thing. A glorious thing. And to actually paddle one is another. There’s a stronger, more spiritual connection with the water when you’re paddling a craft whose bones and body share their essence with the trees that surround you as you go. There’s the sound and feel of water on wood, and the connection of your body to the wood and water. The varnish on the planks and ribs beads up the water as it splashes, reminding you that oil and wood have a natural affinity, working together to keep water in its place; and the inevitable rot, like mortality, at bay. You can smell the sweet aroma of this interaction as you cross the lake on a sunny morning. It all feels like home, even though you may have been born in the era of carbon and kevlar.
The anti-apocalypse
And that’s the thing. The 21st Century, so far, hasn’t given us modernism’s best. When we Boomers were coming up, we were promised personal helicopters, robot butlers, sentient toasters, jet packs, and clean, spacious home-pods in the sky. What we got instead was 9/11, endless war, Tik Tok, alternative facts and a global pandemic. No wonder a healthy chunk of the stories we we tell each other these days are about surviving some kind of apocalypse.
You need to get your hands on one of these. Then you need to hoist it over your head and put it in the water.
The opposite of all that is what I think people see when they gasp in awe at a restored wooden canoe. For a moment, they’re stepping out of the world of the shiny and hard, of glass and chrome, sharp edges and straight corners. They’re connecting with something elemental that comes from a time when the best tools were human hands; a time before things literally got out of hand.
And maybe they’re realizing that what we need is not the space age we were promised, nor the zombie world we ended up with; but what we had before, when we could make it ourselves. And how beautiful that could be.
Really enjoyed this. Thanks
Thanks! Working on it.