Okay, so maybe this isn’t the toughest overlander vehicle out there, but it has what it takes for when the road ends and the water begins.
This photo was taken by Flickr user tomwardill and is licensed under Creative Commons.
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A review of the Necky Elias sea kayak by Adventure Kayak magazine.
At last, an Eliza for bigger folks. Unless you’ve been kayaking in a cave for the past six years, you’ve probably heard of Necky’s accolade-winning women’s specific kayak, or watched petite friends paddling these pretty boats. Watched and wondered, perhaps, “Hey, what about me?”
Well, big fella, meet Elias. Necky calls it “an agile, playful and responsive touring kayak” that is “extremely efficient for its size.” Sound familiar? By borrowing design cues from the Eliza—shallow V hull, semi-hard chines and high, buoyant ends—and then stretching the hull three inches and boosting volume, Necky has delivered a nimble performer that’s well matched to its little sister…
WATCH A VIDEO REVIEW OF THE NECKY ELIAS SEA KAYAK
Necky Elias Specs
This article originally appeared in Adventure Kayak, Spring 2013. To continue reading the full review, download our free iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch App or Android App or read it here.
This editorial originally appeared in Canoeroots and Family Camping magazine.
A fabulous new book called The Canadian Canoe Company and the Early Peterborough Canoe Factories (Cover to Cover Press, 2011) has got me thinking about reincarnation.
According to author Ken Brown, canoe building in Peterborough, Ontario, effectively died in the early 1960s with the Canadian Canoe Company ceasing operations in October 1961 and the Peterborough Canoe Company declaring bankruptcy soon after. But the presence of this book and a quick cruise on the World Wide Web indicates that the products of these venerable canoe companies are still very much on people’s minds.
The demise of industrial canoe building in Peterborough was real enough. Companies that had skillfully grown from an emerging 19th century cottage and craft activity into seven or eight canoe-building factories with robust domestic and international markets, struggled after WWII. Aluminum and fiberglass building techniques—innovations honed in wartime aircraft manufacturing— lent themselves naturally to canoe building. But tooling up for new materials and new building techniques was expensive. And training or retraining a skilled woodworking labor force to make canoes out of plastic or metal was also costly. It was only a matter of time before the wooden canoe companies floundered.
Yet Peterborough thrived through nearly a hundred years of uncommon industrial success. Ken Brown tells us that in a country bordering three oceans, in 1930 a quarter of the 778 Canadians involved in the building of small boats were employed in the land- locked center of the continent by Peterborough area firms, generating a third of the annual $2 million sales in this area of the economy.
After WWII, this tapered back and, after the closure of the Peterborough companies, passed to the skilled hands of later generations of small builders and hobbyists who continue to keep the tradition vibrant.
Today, you can buy Peterborough canoes at auction. Reprints of old catalogues are available for sale in hard and soft cover. The iconic company logos are available as decals for the growing corps of builders and rebuilders from Pacific to Atlantic and Arctic to Caribbean who still love Peterborough shapes in their shops.
And then there are the T-shirts and calendars, and the advertisers who for the past 50 years have freely employed canoe imagery. Selling charcoal, beer, milk or maxipads with canoe imagery cashes in on the fact that from explorers, surveyors, itinerant clergy, police and fur traders to modern day hunters, anglers and recreational paddlers, Peterborough canoes have been involved in just about every aspect of life beyond the fringe in North America. They are part of Canada’s heritage and, as Ken Brown reminds us, part of the history of the U.S., U.K. and countries even farther afield. Advertisers know that consumers are drawn to canoe imagery because this vessel—the Peterborough canoe in particular—is part of who we are.
James Raffan is thinking of coming back as an explorer, writer and executive director of The Canadian Canoe Museum.
This article appeared in Canoeroots & Family Camping, Spring 2012.
Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip……
This photo was an entry in the 2011 Experience Canadian Heritage Rivers Photo Contest, taken by Jeff McColl. Learn more about heritage rivers here.
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Ted Bell is back in business. The former owner of Bell Canoe Works is again designing and manufacturing canoes, this time for his new company, Bell Composites.
Producing canoes only since January, Bell’s business is based out of Zimmerman, Wisconsin. Currently, only two designs are available—the Northwinds 17 and Northwinds 18 are both based off of Bell’s past models and have updated designs. Next month, Bell Composites will add a solo canoe to their roster of boats; the design is based off of Bell Canoe Works’ popular Magic.
“I’ve been dabbling in composites all along, onesies here and there,” says Bell of the decision to specialize in composites.
Business is going well so far. Expecting to produce 100 boats this year, Bell Composites is sold out of production through the season.
In the canoe business for more than 25 years, Bell founded and ran Bell Canoe Works for 20 years, selling it in 2006. “They did some things that were different than what everyone else in the canoeing world was doing, then they shut their doors,” says Bell of the new owners.
Bell’s designs are known for being efficient and seaworthy. “The boats I’m building, their predecessors have a major following. The Northwinds are the most popular boats in Bell Canoe Works’ line,” he says. “The Northwinds 17 was the best-selling boat over the years and Northwinds 18 was the best-selling boat in the Boundary Waters Area.”
Followers of the line will be pleased that they can get these boats, Bell says, adding that it was a non-compete agreement that’s kept him under the radar for so long.
This year, Bell Composites will be available at just half a dozen dealers, including Wisconsin’s Piragis. Expect to see them locally in 2014 with expanded distribution and a third tandem design.
A review of the Kokatat Maximus Prime rescue PFD from Adventure Kayak magazine.
For maximum comfort even on stamina-testing tows, this Type V rescue PFD features extra-wide shoulder straps and independently suspended chest and torso flotation panels. Most importantly, the integrated tether system and radio mount keep critical safety gear within easy reach when every second counts.
www.kokatat.com | $219
This article originally appeared in Adventure Kayak, Spring 2013. Download our free iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch App or Android App or read it here.
This kayak trip destination is excerpted from “The East Coast’s Best 5 Places to Paddle” in Adventure Kayak magazine.
Newfoundland’s Iceberg Alley
Every year, hundreds of icebergs, ranging in size from small houses to navy destroyers, catch a free ride south from Greenland to Newfoundland on the Labrador Current. Some of the bergs get stuck in shallow bays, some disintegrate into millions of pieces and others drift right past, there one day gone the next. Prime berg-watching hotspots are Twillingate on the central coast and Quirpon Island on the very northern tip. The Newfoundlanders’ incredible hospitality, the hundreds of icebergs and the dramatic coastline easily land The Rock as a top Maritime destination. Prepare to be blown away by the water clarity, remoteness and coastal paddling conditions.
INFO: Kayak Newfoundland Labrador, www.kayakers.nf.ca
OUTFITTING: Linkum Tours, www.linkumtours.com
This article originally appeared in Adventure Kayak, Early Summer 2009. Download our free iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch App or Android App or read it here.
For more places to paddle with ice, read Adventure Kayak, Spring 2013. Download our free iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch App or Android App or read it here.
Even the goosebump-inducing waters of Lake Superior’s North Shore can’t put a damper on splashing into summer. Photo courtesy of Ontario Tourism.
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This article originally appeared in Canoeroots and Family Camping magazine.
Summer 2009 marked 100 years since the inception of one of the canoeing world’s largest protected areas. When Quetico became an Ontario forest reserve in 1909 and then a provincial park in 1913, a paddler’s paradise was born.
It’s a place you can exercise your eyes on cascading waterfalls, reflective tannin lakes and stands of old-growth forest; spend calm evenings lying on a rock listening to loons call; pick marble-sized wild blueberries for morning pancakes;
This “island” area was first protected in 1909. It’s not really a true island. The Hunter Island area is a chunk of land and lakes that split the two historically significant fur-trade routes, Kaministiquia and Grand Portage. The route is chock-full of history and has far more water to paddle than trails to portage. And with Quetico being a border park, you can get to it either at the north end from Atikokan, Ontario, or from Ely, Minnesota and through the Boundary Waters Canoe Area to the south.
The 200-kilometre circuit takes 12 to 14 days to complete, though it’s possible to slice and dice the circuit to leave you with different trips of five or seven days. If you are in a hurry, have a go at the annual Hunter Island Canoe Race and try to break the speed re- cord. The current record, set in 1994, is just under 29 hours.
But you’re best not to rush the trip. Hunter Island has too many natural and historic treasures along the way. Paddling this route you will pass: the place where Bill Mason starred in his first film, a portion of David Thompson’s survey route of Canada, the route of the militia heading to engage Louis Riel during the Red River Rebellion, the place where the infamous John Tanner was shot, a portion of pioneering conservationist Aldo Leopold’s favorite canoe trip, significant native pictograph sites and Warrior Hill, where young Ojibway braves raced to the top to test their worth as warriors.
For reservations in Quetico call 1-888- ONT-PARK. If you are coming from the United States you don’t need to camp in the BWCA, but you’ll need a Remote Border Crossing Permit from www.queticopark.com/rabc/index.html.
For more information:
This article appeared in Canoeroots & Family Camping, Spring 2009.
An unprecedented 184 manatees have been killed in Gulf of Mexico waters off southwest Florida so far this year due to a toxic red tide bloom that has impacted roughly 100 miles of coast. The death toll surpasses the previous record of 151 manatee deaths from red tide in 1996. “The toxin paralyzes the manatee so it is not able to take a breathe, to come to the surface, and they basically drown,” said Martine DeWit, a veterinarian with FWC’s marine mammal pathology laboratory. 
Twelve rescued manatees have been taken to Tampa’s Lowry Park Zoo for emergency medical care, where zookeepers alternate three-hour shifts holding their heads out of tank water so they can breathe. One manatee brought in had to have its head held above water for 29 hours before it was able to begin breathing on its own. Fortunately, According to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC), as of mid-March the deaths seem to be tapering off. But until it’s safe to return the manatees to the wild, “We’ll just keep taking them in,” says Virginia Edmonds, Lowry’s animal care manager for Florida mammals. “We want to save as many as we can.” Via E-The Envirionmental Magazine.
Austria-based explorer, anthropologist, filmmaker, publisher, author and Fellow with The Royal Geographical Society, Julian Monroe Fisher, is set to begin the third phase of his five-year Great African Expedition, exploring Africa’s interior using Folbot Greenland II expedition kayaks. Last May, Fisher completed a successful overland journey from Cairo to Khartoum, and in February he finished travelling from Juba, the capital of South Sudan, to Uganda’s Lake Albert. Next, Fisher plans to circumnavigate Lake Victoria in Uganda.
Fisher, originally hailing from South Carolina, says the trip’s aim is ethnographical. He’s retracing the African expeditionary routes of Victorian explorers Speke, Grant, Brazza, Burton, Baker, Baumann, Linz, Livingstone and Stanley, with the goal of comparing the 19th century tribal kingdom documentation with the cultural realities of the 21st century along the same Central African rivers and lakes. Via PaddlingLife.
The first-ever Mountain Folk Adventure Series launches May 5 with a two-month, human-powered journey down the 2,350-mile length of the Mississippi River, from Lake Itasca, Minnesota, to New Orleans. Participating teams in the Mississippi River Run are required to raise $1,000 for Habitat for Humanity, and will be on their own for the roughly 60 days aside from two checkpoint-cum-parties. Learn more at http://www.themountainfolk.com/
