New Canoe!

After much deliberation, and years of dreaming of owning a canoe, I finally manned up and got one.

I spent basically the entire weekend doing research about which one to buy, and finally I settled on the Old Town Pack. Some criteria:

1. Solo canoe. I do not need to have more than one person at a time in the canoe.
2. Lightweight. The lighter the better. I'm going to be lifting it onto the car myself after paddling, I would prefer not to drop it.
3. Small. It needs to fit both on my car (a civic) and, more importantly, into my apartment.

The smallness was the biggest factor, since in order to get it into the apartment I needed to fit it through a window. After much measuring, I decided that the pack should, in fact, fit.

After work today, I hurried over to The Boat House (a local watersport store) and asked about the Pack. I had found out the day before that they actually had one in stock, so I was excited to see it.

After talking for a few minutes, the owner indicated that they had a Pack available for rental as well, and that if I liked I could rent it and try it. If I liked it, the cost of the rental would come out of the price of the canoe (I was surprised to find it was only $15 to rent the canoe, for some reason I thought it would be more).

I rushed to the car and grabbed my paddle and PFD, and next thing I knew I was paddling up the Mowhawk river in a Pack. It was pretty windy, and I had a little trouble making very good speed against the wind and current combined, but it was fun as hell.

View Paddle Test in a larger map

After my little paddle, I happily went back to the store and put my monies down on the boat. Unfortunetly, by the time it was all said and done I didn't have time to actually try my new canoe.

But now came the real test, would it fit into the apartment?

After arriving back at my place, canoe strapped securely to the roof of my car, and after much measuring, I gave it a shot.

Worked like a charm! Of course, now I have to re-organize my living room...