Canoe Rehab Prelude

TGIF, the perfect time for a canoe rehab prelude. A tempting preview — albeit a bit premature for the paddling season — aimed at jumpstarting the joy.

If all goes to plan, next Wednesday will be a memorable day, no, a *banner day* for boats and boating! Well, future boating, at least. Boating postponed. It will be early February after all… Sure, this begs the question, why (and how) in the world will next Wednesday be a banner day for boating?! For a while now I’ve been anticipating the arrival of two handsome additions to our people powered fleet, and more precisely an expansion of our Adirondack Guide Boat fleet.

I should clarify. We do not own an Adirondack guideboat. Yet. I’ve yearned for one most of my life. Quietly. Patiently. Impractically. Romantically. And, if you’ve been with me for a while, you may recollect me deliberating on whether it made more sense to invest in an Adirondack guideboat or a Vermont dory. The Martin brothers, Justin and Ian, guided my ultimate decision to graft my guideboat dreams onto a Vermont dory. The are wise. Their guidance was sound. And I’ve loved my dory to the point of obsession.

But I’ve failed miserably to shake my unabashed affection for the oh-so beautiful lines and bearing of guideboats. A couple of months ago I decided to confront my infatuation once and for all. By gifting Susan a guideboat for Christmas!

But I’m getting ahead of myself. This post was intended as a canoe rehab prelude, and I’ve been talking about nothing but guideboats and dories. Suffice to say that my reference to expanding our Adirondack Guide Boat fleet actually referred to our fleet of vessels lovingly labored to perfection by Justin Martin and Ian Martin’s North Ferrisburgh, Vermont based company, Adirondack Guide Boat (adirondack-guide-boat.com).

Now let’s return to our legacy Mad River Canoe featured in the photos above and below.

Some years ago, my mother-in-law cleaned out a storage area beneath her Rock Harbor deck. A pair of canoes (one belonging to my sister-in-law) and an old Sunfish found their way to Rosslyn where they once again sat in storage. The older canoe, wooden gunnels and cane seats rotten, struck me as worthy of rehabilitation. Fortunately, the good folks at Adirondack Guide Boat agreed to the challenge. (Source: Hand-me-down Haiku)

A challenge indeed! These images show the condition of the vessel shortly before they delivered my new Vermont Dory and retrieved the crumbling canoe in June 2023.

Many might wonder why I’d bother to salvage this disintegrating artifact. Perhaps not the most practical or expedient instinct, I admit. But nor was rehabilitating our historic home. Sometimes revitalizing is more meaningful, more rewarding, more responsible, and more satisfying than replacing. I’ll leave it there. For now.

The old, rotted canoe has a new destiny unfolding as we speak. Reimagine and reuse, I so often extol. I mostly manage to practice what I preach, and that means that you can begin anticipating a second act for this vessel. (Source: Clearing Out Carriage Barn)

Here were my eager thoughts at the time.

When they deliver my new green skiff, they’ll pick up our old hand-me-down canoe for midwinter replacement of the rotten wood gunnels. (Source: Adirondack Guideboat or Vermont Dory?)

I told Justin at the time that there was no rush rebuilding the canoe. In there hands I felt confident that it was already a step closer to rebirth. It was comforting. I figured we could coordinate a strategy later, when they had time in their workflow, when we could better brainstorm a suitable plan.

Initially I thought that it might make sense to replace the rotten parts with the same hardwood that had been used to fabricate them in the first place. Ash? I knew that Justin and Ian had started out their careers building canoes at Mad River Canoe. If anyone could come up with a reasonable repair proposal for this canoe it would be the two of them.

And given the fact that the Kevlar hull was unbleached and a bit battle worn but otherwise intact — no punctures or tears, no delamination, and no prospect of breaking down organically any time soon — it just made sense to return it to service. The petrochemicals used to make it had long ago been committed; chemical outgassing had long since taken place; the environmental impact of replacing it seemed senseless and irresponsible if rehab proved possible; and, quite frankly, the pretty patina was perfect. I decided to keep it out of a landfill!

This winter the Martins made time for the labor of love. I was thrilled. The collaborative brainstorm proved even more rewarding than I imagined at the outset, and the evolution of the canoe rehab exceeded my expectation and most ambitious aspirations. But, once again, I’m getting ahead of myself. I’ll save the reveal for next Wednesday if conditions prove propitious for delivery. And, I promise to revisit the mysterious Adirondack guideboat that was stuffed into Susan’s Christmas stocking. Soon.

For now, I’ll conclude today’s dispatch with 1) a couple of excerpts from previous posts that hint at my soft spot for canoes and canoeing, 2) a peak inside the Martin’s boatworks during the canoe rehab about two months ago, and 3) a teaser for tomorrow’s post which will be yet another banner day on the blog.

Sometimes stagnant waters are actually just one small sliver of a much larger oasis… A small pivot, a few paddle strokes in a canoe, will alter the perspective revealing a bigger picture and a broader context. (Source: Sometimes Stagnant)

—//—

[Memories of] canoeing with my father and my siblings in whitewater rapids that we eventually had to abandon… (Source: Downriver Drifting)

I believe that’s Ian in the photograph painstakingly deconstructing the canoe.

And, last but not least, tomorrow’s blog post. For now let’s just say that today’s blog post is a monumental milestone in the old house journaling quest I undertook a while ago… ¡Hasta mañana!