15 foot Kennebec Canoe

[kleppermaster]

This is a long shot but:

When My wife and I first met I was a collage student at Bemidji State University in Northern, MN. I worked part time at the recreational center at the student union. The RC rented out canoes and sailboats. All the canoes with one exception were crapy floating fiberglass tanks made by Core-craft. The one exception was a genuine wood & canvas Kennebec canoe. It was old and had been fiber-glassed. Only RC staff were allowed to use it.

My wife and I went paddling in it often. It was 15 feet long. It had light initial stability, but solid final stability. When you touched a paddle to the water it just took off!

Now, at the time all I had to compare it to were the Core-craft rentals and Grumman Aluminum canoes. I thought this was the finest canoe in the world. Alas, They sold it to another staff member for $50.00.

I never found out what model it was. I have been looking on & off for another one, but not knowing the model, it's difficult to be sure. I haven't paddled a lot of canoes, so far I haven't found what I'm looking for. I have a few questions:

Has anyone had experience enough with kennebec canoes to be able to identify the model based on my description?

Are there any canoe plans available that would provide those characteristics?

Thanks all

Jim

 

[Dan Miller]

Hi Jim,

Kennebec built at least four different models in the 15' length over the years, including the Kennebec Model, Kineo Model, Kineo Special, and Charles River 1915 model. I've attached catalog pages from 1924 of the first three (the CR 1915 is pretty rare, as it was only offered a few years).

If you are thinking of building a similar canoe, you can compare the dimensions of the different Kennebec models to the list of canoe plans found on the WCHA site: http://www.wcha.org/canoe-plans/ (it is not an exhaustive list, there may be others out there that I am not aware of). Your choice of plans may also be influenced by what construction technique you plan to use, or how comfortable you are adapting plans for one method to another.

 

[Benson Gray]

I can't identify the Kennebec model based on your description but canoes with relatively round bottoms and tumblehome are frequently described as having "light initial stability, but solid final stability." Kennebec regularly advertised tumble home as shown below. Old Town and many other manufacturers also built canoes this way as shown at http://www.wcha.org/catalogs/old-town/hull-x-s.gif and their HW model has the most round bottom. The fifteen foot long versions of the HW are somewhat rare as shown at http://www.wcha.org/catalogs/old-town/models.html but the longer versions are much more readily available. Several are currently listed at http://wcha.org/pp-classifieds/ for example. More information about Kennebec, Old Town, and other canoes can be found in the catalog reproductions at http://store.wcha.org/Historic-Canoe-Catalogs/ if you want to research this further. Good luck with your search,

Benson