CLC's Fleet of Wooden Canoes You Can Build
Someone built a canoe 10,000 years ago.
We're still building canoes.
Versatile. Light. Easy to build. Easy to use. If you haven't built a canoe yet, maybe you should! Chesapeake Light Craft has abundant choices, from ultralight "pack canoes" to serious sailing canoes. Here's a rundown.
Sassafras 12
During the advent of recreational boating in the late decades of the 19th century, some of the first popular boats were small, very light, lapstrake canoes like CLC's Sassafras 12. These are known as "double-paddle" canoes, because they're narrow enough to use a kayak paddle, and the seating position is more kayak-like.
J. Henry Rushton had a specialty in ultralight canoes, light enough to be walked into the woods to secret fishing holes. "Sairy Gamp," built in 1882, was the pinnacle of the "pack canoe" style.
Coming in well under 30 pounds, the Sassafras 12 is also extremely easy to build. A great first-time boatbuilding project.
Sassafras 16
The Sassafras 16 is also a lapstrake canoe, using CLC's LapStitch™ process for rapid, easy construction. It's a popular kit, with hundreds and hundreds built. It's a nice size canoe for a family, with a family-sized payload and plenty of stability. The Sassafras 16 can be converted into a rowing boat with the Canoe Rowing Rig.
Nymph 10 & Nymph 12
Nick Schade's Nymph Canoe design is an heir to the Rushton ultralight canoe tradition. A very-carefully built 10-foot version of the Nymph can be built as light as 20 pounds. The 12-foot Nymph will come in less than 30 pounds.
The Nymphs are built of strip-planked cedar, and are about average in terms of ease of construction. You'll build the Nymph over a temporary mold, sheathing the bead-and-cove strips with lightweight fiberglass. Have a copy of Nick Schade's book on hand.
Mystic River Canoe
Light and fast, the 17-foot Mystic River Canoe is a high-performance tandem. The Nick Schade-designed Mystic is a great first strip-planked boatbuilding project.
Mill Creek 16.5
"Decked canoes" showed up early in recreational canoe development. Putting a deck on a traditional canoe hull makes the canoe safer in choppy conditions and creates storage compartments.
A decked canoe like the Mill Creek 16.5 offers the stability of a canoe, but the efficiency of kayak-style double paddles and a kayak's seating position. The comfort and versatility of CLC's Mill Creek kayaks has made them ascendently popular since they first appeared in 1996.
Mill Creek 13
The Mill Creek 13 is a speedy and functional decked canoe that's perfect for fishing, birding, photography, and knocking around. The 13 has enough stability to be fitted with a sailing rig, a feature of decked canoes that's been exploited since the 1800's.
Wood Duck 12
The Eric Schade-penned Wood Duck Kayak series combines the virtues of the old decked canoes with more modern kayak designs. Plenty of stability, big, comfortable cockpits, and excellent speed and handling with a kayak paddle.
The Wood Ducks are available in 10, 12, and 14-foot lengths as singles, or as a 14-foot tandem kayak. The Wood Duck 12, the most popular, weighs in at just 40 pounds.
microBootlegger
Kinetic sculpture AND an excellent, highly functional decked canoe, the microBootlegger by Nick Schade is a moderately advanced project for strip-planking. The first microBootlegger design was a relatively straightforward tandem canoe, but Nick has expanded the marque to include solo canoe versions, and high-performance sea kayaks with similar styling.
CLC's SailRig Conversion
CLC has offered a kit for outriggers and crossbeams—a trimaran-conversion kit—since 1995. Easily-driven canoes and kayaks can be turned into fast, light trimarans with the CLC SailRig. Here's one of the rigs mounted on a Mill Creek 16.5.
Waterlust Canoe
CLC's Waterlust Sailing Canoe, designed by Dillon Majoros, is the real deal. It was designed from a clean sheet of paper as a decked sailing canoe that can also be propelled with paddles or a Hobie Mirage Drive. It is a worthy descendant of the sailing canoes popularized by John MacGregor.
Pacific Proa "Madness"
John Harris's 31-foot Pacific Proa, Madness? The ultimate sailing canoe...
It all started with canoes, developed by the Austronesian people into outriggers and amazing ocean-going vessels. In those boats they populated the islands of the Pacific and Indian oceans.