Marlowethelazydog wrote:
I have a bit of a hard canoe choice to make and I am asking for your help. I know there is no one perfect canoe design.
I camp with my kids 8 and 5. We camp a lot including winter camping and except for the winter stuff we are pretty minimalist.anyhow, I want to start doing some 3 - 4 night canoe trips with the kids over.flat water now that I live on a lake.
I’ll second Rab, especially for future considerations.
rab wrote:
I'm going to recommend something bigger. With two kids you will likely have lots of gear.
The kids are 8 and 5 today. And today only; in a few years sized 10 & 7. . . . .12 & 9. . . .
There is no perfect canoe design for a growing family. A 16 footer that accommodates you, 5 & 8 and tripping gear today will quickly become growing-kids more cramped. A Titanic canoe big enough for you, 12 & 9 and growing gear load in future days would be, well:
rab wrote:
for just two people it is likely overkill.
There are lots of good suggestions above, and unknowns to consider. My sons went into small solo canoes at an early age, a few years apart, so it was nice have a symmetrical tandem that flipped around bow backwards with just the younger kid as bowman, and later bow forward. That design bought us a decade’s use with that canoe.
That is a long winded way of saying I would look for a bow backwards-able used canoe, something appropriate for now and some years hence, and figure another canoe is in your future.
Maybe a used kid-sized solo, a used Pack-type canoe (or, gasp, kid-sized kayak). My sons paddled a 70’s composite Old Town Rushton (10’, 18 lbs), a Rolayex (lite) Dagger Tupelo (10’ 6”, 29 lbs) and a Wilderness Systems Piccolo (13’ 6” kid sized mini sea kayak, 42 lbs). They have long outgrown those wee craft, but all of those boats are still in use with friend’s kids.
Those kid-sized boats are harder to find used than a family sized tandem. Kid appropriate width especially, no short fat pumpkinseed rec kayaks that appear to have swallowed a child desperately holding a paddle at chest level. Maybe start looking now; 10 is a good age to start soloing on easy daytrips.
Thank you. Lots to think about here.
As much as anything that early “Captain of their own boat” is likely to elicit a kids love of paddling, and it’s a lot more family fun when they’re into it.
OK, it was a lotlot more fun when I could go back into a solo canoe myownself. For starters we could finally paddle alongside each other, and I could actually hear what the boys were saying instead of:
“Mumblemumblesomething”
“What?”
“Mumblesomethingmumble”
“What?”
“Never mind!”