A new take on an old favorite will hit rivers this spring: a brand new composite version of the ever-popular Ocoee canoe.
Andy Convery, the paddler and craftsman behind Ontario-based Echo Paddles, has been busy “polishing, scraping, scrubbing and waxing,” the mold and it’s ready to go. The first composite Ocoee will be ready this Friday and on the water by the weekend.
The composite Ocoee will be a combination of carbon, Kevlar and fiberglass—materials Convery has worked with a lot in his two decades of crafting handmade paddles.
Convery expects the hull to weigh between 25 to 30 pounds, and the final product, with outfitting and gunwales installed, to weigh 30 to 35 pounds. The most recent Royalex hull tipped the scales at 38 pounds.
“The beauty of composites is that I’m going to be able to do almost anything,” says Convery. “Rather than laying a skid plate over an existing hull like a big Band-Aid, which definitely affects the performance and weight, I can lay that up right into the hull materials, so it’ll have a reinforced bow and stern already.”
He can also customize the composite materials to each paddler’s needs: “If someone wants a tougher model, we can lay it up heavier,” he says. “We’ll add more layers of Kevlar and we’ll add an extra layer of glass on the exterior to beef it up. The more layers of fabric the heavier it will be and the more robust it’ll be. If someone wants a slalom model, we can lay it up lighter.”
When I ask Convery how the strength and durability of the composites will compare to Royalex versions, he says he thinks they might last longer.
“They’re going to take some abuse and get banged up, but they are infinitely repairable. We had a bit of a false sense of security with ABS boats, thinking we could bang them up, but we couldn’t repair them very well because patches just fall off. This boat is a bit more fragile but you can repair it with the same materials it was built with, and the repair will last.”
“I feel like the death of Royalex may end up being the evolution of paddling, taking us back to skill and precision rather than just bashing our way down rapids.”
Hard-chined and flat-bottomed, the original Ocoee was designed at Dagger in ‘93 by the late Frank Hubbard, revolutionizing the OC world and enduring as one of the most popular canoe designs ever. Convery got his first Ocoee in ’98 and says this idea has been simmering ever since. “It’s a hull shape that will really benefit from a light, stiff layup,” he says.
Convery sees the endeavor as a fun, personal project and plans to take the same business approach as he did when he started selling paddles in 1998: “I’ll make a few and see what happens.” Echo Paddles has since shipped thousands handcrafted products around the world. He expects to price a raw hull around $1,600, and charge his usual $300 to install gunwales and $500 for Mike Yee outfitting.
Rapid will receive one of Echo’s first composite Ocoees by mid-April and publish a full review once we’ve taken it for a spin. Stay tuned for photos of the first prototype, coming next week.
