I've been pretty busy so I didn't get a chance to post this until today! Last week, my wife and I took our first outing with our new canoe, a Wenonah Solo Plus Ultralight (Kevlar). Overall, it was a pleasing success despite some humorous loading / unloading, tiedown, and ground transport logistics, and despite my, and at least one dealer's, concerns about whether a canoe could simultaneously be used as either a "solo" or a "tandem", because of stability and dimensional constraints.
The loading / unloading and tiedown logistics . . .Loading the canoe was both easy and somewhat risky.
Easy because it is a Wenonah "Ultralight Kevlar", so despite having a bow slding adjustable "tractor" seat, a stern tractor seat, a middle vertically and horizontally adjustable cane seat, and a stern foot brace all included, it weighs in at an actual 42.6 lb on a digital scale. And, the roof rack's crossbars are only about 52" above the pavement.
Somewhat risky because of the type of roof rack that Thule and Mercedes together designed and built for my Mercedes "C" class sized car. It has 4 towers with notable "tumblehome", AND the 2 aero crossbars terminate within, NOT over and beyond, the towers. This means the crossbars are both short (just 30.5" of net usable width) which limits the gunwale width of canoe that they will accommodate. Equally importantly, there is normally nothing to prevent the canoe from sliding sideways off the crossbars during loading or unloading, since the crossbars "blend" right into the towers and both the aero crossbars and the towers are very "slippery" for aero reasons!
I had in preparation (a) bought a canoe with "tumblehome" which results in a narrow 29.5" gunwale width, and (b) installed a Thule "Portage" kit. This includes 4 "blocks" that can be installed on the 2 crossbars, EITHER inboard or outboard of the canoe gunwales, so that they prevent the canoe from sliding sideways once it is in position and secured against any strong crosswind. However, you have to lift and push the canoe forward from the car's rear, or lift and push sideways from the side of the car to get the canoe INTO that "secured" position! Lifting and pushing from the rear, using a Thule "Waterfall" blanket on the trunk of the car in case of mishap, worked nicely. But my wife pointed out that if I ever lost temporary control of the canoe during loading or unloading, due to either a crosswind or the slippery surface of both the canoe's gunwales and the Thule aero crossbars, I would likely put a fairly giant gash into the car's costly paint! With my wife's help, I was very careful and no disasters occurred in any of the 4 loading and unloading events involved in the one outing. But, my wife is uneasy about me doing laoding and unloading "solo" when she is not available to accompany me on an outing. THis is an as-yet unresolved concern.
Once the canoe is on the rack and secured from sideways sliding by the Portage blocks, installing the Thule 2 crossbar tiedown "belts" with their toothed buckles was easy, tensioning "just enough" to prevent sideways movement of the bow and stern was easy, and the rubber "holsters" for the Thule tiedown belt buckles worked great to protect the canoe from the buckles! A 3rd tiedown belt secured the rear crossbar to a thwart on the canoe that conveniently runs across the gunwales JUST in front of that rear crossbar!
The big issue with the 3 tiedown belts was what to do with the many FEET of excess belt on all 3! I got these "looseends" wrapped and tied so they wouldn't flap in the wind at speed, but that took way longer than installing the 3 belts! I am planning to cut and melt the ends of all 3 belts to leave a lot less excess belt to tie up afetr belt tightening!
The bow and stern tiedowns were done for the 1st of the 2 trip segments, and despite using the Thule "ratchet ropes", this was a giant pain that both me and my wife agreed we would never do again until we needed to do an actual "highway speed" outing. This first outing, to a beach seacoast launch point just 3 miles away, involved a maximum speed of just 65 kilometers per hour, so the bow and stern lines were an unnecessary precaution, but we wanted to "try doing it". What an ordeal.
First, we had to install "underhood" loops to fasten the ratchet ropes to. These needed "twisting' to alleviate the "musical instrument string" vibration that occurs at even under 50 kph. One of them vibrated anyway. Good thing we put on 2 layers of 3M "light adhesive hold" painters' masking tape where each underhood loop wrapped around the sides of the hood! We had to tie one end of each ratchet rope to each hood loop, run each tidown rope through the front carry bar on the canoe, and then ratchet both tieropes snug but not tight enough to bend or fracture the canoe.
At the trunk, we had to use the Thule loops that have the plastic T-pipes at one end, to hold that end of the loops inside the trunk, and then we tied and ratcheted the ropes, again controlling the tension to "just enough".
Then we had to route the excess rope back up through the canoe front handle, rearward to a thwrat, where they could both be tied off to the thwart, with minimized excess (hah!) and be out of my line of vision.
These d*** bow and stern tiedown ropes took a LONG time to "get right", totally turn me off as a "solution", and just plain suck. Plus, they look like s***. There HAS to be a better way.
The subsequent unloading, loading, and unloading involved in the one outing merely strengthened out determination to never again have to use a solution this inconvenient and slow for bow and stern tiedowns.
Fortunately, since we have literally many miles of local gorgeous seacoast to explore with numerous nearby launch locations, we won't need to find a better bow and stern line solution for at least a while.
The rest of the logistics, especially gear (paddles, lifejackets, coast guard safety kit components, dry bag, rope line, throw line, etc) were easy and we decided that the easiest way to handle those is to leave everything except the paddles right in the trunk of the car for "the season". The paddles won't fit in the trunk, so we will need to remember to take them along on each outing! That's why we have a "checklist".
Ground transport logistics . . .My wife insisted that taking the C-Tug Sandtrakz along was "unnecessary" since there were 2 of us and the canoe "only weighs 42.6 lb", and "we can just carry it". I tried explaining that 4.26 lb becomes maybe 55 or more lb with all the required gear and paddles inside the canoe. I also explained that because we would be arriving late at the beach because she "took a LONG while" to get ready, we would no longer be arriving before high tide, but rather significantly LATER than high tide, and the "as the crow walks" difference in "distance to the water" between high tide and low tide is, no kidding, something in the 1.5 to 2km range!! And, it's all alternating sand, mud, stones, and seaweed. She said I was overthinking it.
She was smug about that until we arrived at the beach, and she physically SAW the distance, and the terrain, between where we parked and where the water started. Suffice to say, it took 6 trip segments, and 5 rest stops, to get her, the canoe, and the gear inside the canoe to the water's edge. She did make the point finally that the next time we go oput, we will bring the C-Tug Sandtrakz . . .
Solo and tandem compatibility - dimensional and stability. . . I had selected the Wenonah Solo Plus only after a but of a struggle and misdirection. I had done a fair bit of canoe research, including reading 3 canoeing books, and had concluded that since I would be going solo 80% of the time, but also wanted my wife to be able to come with me whenever her schedule permits (I am retired but she is pretty busy as a student training for a new career and later will be working at least part-time). So, I wanted a canoe that would function well BOTH as a solo canoe and as a tandem. I also wanted it narrow so that I could have higher performance, could use a kayak paddle (I strongly prefer that), and so the canoe would fit on the narrow roof of my car so that I could go canoeing at all!
The first dealer I worked with, and the factory he dealt with (Clipper) both basically said "no way". They said that a canoe narrow enough for my objectives and needs would be TOO narrow for sufficient stability and physical space for the bow paddler, and basically said they could not help me. Since this was coming from the largest dealership chain on Vancouver Island, and from the major local canoe manufacturer, I was starting to think that my renewed canoeing dream was about to end before it even got started.
The second dealer though agreed with my analysis of the Wenonah Solo Plus specs that I found on the website. The Solo Plus is 16-1/2 feet long. It has a maximum width of 32.75", a waterline width of 31.75", but a gunwale width of just 29". It has the weight capacity to easily handle both me and my wife, plus our modest minimal gear (daytrips only - no camping trips or longer trips). Since the bow depth is just 19", the stern depth is just 17", the centre depth is 13", having zero rocker, and having a real centre seat, I figured that with just me aboard, and especially with the kayak paddle, it would not be hard to keep on course even in a mild crosswind. And, Wenonah does aftert all market the Solo Plus specifically as a dual purpose solo/tandem canoe!
My sole concerns were degree of stability and physical legroom for my wife. I figured the sliding bow seat would help with both, and the only way to assess the acceptability of its stability was to buy it and try it, as there were no Solo Plus canoes anywhere nearby at all (Wenonah, being in Wisconsin, doesn't ship a lot of canoes to the west coast!). Since I had initially thought seriously about a sea surf kayak, where the typical widths are 20 to 24" for a "moderate recreational" one, and since I am both a bicyclist and a motorcyclist, the Solo Plus's stability, even if it turned out to be "tender", did not scare me.
The first ride . . .
The first ride really reassured me! My wife never even MENTIONED stability as a concern. She was mostly very comfortable, but complained just mildly that her legs bumped the gunwales a bit, but agreed that installing a pair of foam pads would take care of that nicely! She found paddling, either side, very easy from her "cockpit" and found the tractor seat comfortable. I was totally comfortable in the stern seat, both from a paddling and a seating perspective, plus I loved the foot brace! The dealership is going to install a foot brace for me at the CNTRE seat too, withOUT having to pierce the Kevlar hull, so I'll also have that when going solo.
Even with both of us and the modest gear aboard (maybe around 380 lb total??) , we drew very little water. This turned out to be great because it made navigating the tidal flats very easy! In fact, we drew lots of surprised looks, as people all around us were WALKING in the varying water level of that huge tidal plain. At times, we had to change course to avoid running aground on "sandbars"
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The view into the seawater was spectacular. We saw many, many colorful shells and sea critters, and the changing topography (mud, sand, stones, seaweed, etc) was a constant movie to watch.
The Kevlar construction is of course translucent, so I could actually watch the waterline height from inside the canoe!
There was only about a 5 knot wind that day, and so the water was hardly disturbed at all, making it easy to see the underwater views, and of course the flat water and shallow depth meant that we were ultra safe despite being "amateurs" (I was last in a canoe about 2-1/2 decades ago, and my wife had only ever been in one maybe twice in her life).
Finally, we did not put any scratches into our canoe on our first outing! And, washing out the interior and exterior in the underground parking garage at the condo, after the saltwater outing, turned out to be a very quick and easy chore.
It was about as perfect a first trip in our new canoe as I could imagine, except for those d*** bow and stern tielines! And I am definitely going to find some major improvements in the way we do those!
My longest duration of canoeing was in college almost half a century ago, when I had a job each summer, working out of tent camps placed 50 miles from the nearest town, dropped in by a bush plane on floats, with a 17 foot fiberglass canoe and 3 hp outboard for use as basic local transportation! Our 2 or 3 man crews used to run those canoes UP over beaver dams in creeks - crazy what you do when you are young and foolish! (WE were 50 miles from any civilization, with NO radio to call for help - only a weekly bush plane provision-replensihing visit! It's a miracle we survived!). It's great to be back in canoeing!
Now, I just have to figure out how to SAFELY bring along my DLSC camera with macro lens, so I can enjoy my sealife macro photography hobby when I am in the canoe and not just walking the tidal flats!
Jim G