1914 otca?

[stevcar]

Greetings,

I recently acquired what I believe to be an Old Town OTCA with s/n 20849 18. From information I've gleaned from this site it would seem to have been built sometime around 1914. Could someone help me out with the build records for this canoe?

The canoe also came with a sailing rig. It has only one leeboard and the bottom of the mast is tapered to a square. Would this sailing rig have come with the canoe originally and does it seem appropriate to have just the one leeboard? Most sailing rigs I've seen have two.

Thanks for any help you can provide.

Steve Carpenter

 

[Kathryn Klos]

Hi Steve,

Old Town 20849 is an 18 foot CS (common sense, or middle) grade Charles River model canoe that was completed February--April 1912. It has red Western cedar planking, open spruce gunwales, ash decks, thwarts, and seat frames, and a keel. It was painted auto gray, with the name "Marcia" on [can't read, but usually the notation is something like "right bow" or "left stern"]. I also can't read the original destination of the canoe, but it appears to have been shipped 11-15-1912. The month and day of shipment aren't certain. This record didn't scan well, and you might want to send $3 to Old Town for part number 01.1332.0100 as shown at http://oldtown.wcha.org/parts.html to get a more legible copy of the build record.

There is no mention of a sail rig sent with the canoe from the factory. The Charles River model isn't commonly used for sailing... the HW is the model recommended for lakes and larger rivers and for use as a sailing canoe. The CR is shallower and designed for quiet river paddling. The sail rig could have been added at the time of purchase from the dealer to whom this canoe was originally shipped, or it could have been added at a later date. You're right about lee boards coming in pairs.

If your canoe is an Otca, then we don't have the correct record and you need to re-check the serial number at each end and compare. The Otca model prior to 1957 had a one-piece 20" deck with coaming, not the "typical" Old Town short deck with an ogee-type curve. You can check out the deck styles at www.dragonflycanoe.com/id/ by scrolling to "Old Town" on the left.

The scan of this record is attached below-- click on it to get a larger image. This scan and several hundred thousand others were created with substantial grants from the Wooden Canoe Heritage Association (WCHA) and others. A description of the project to preserve these records is available at http://www.wcha.org/ot_records/ if you want more details. I hope that you and anyone else reading this will join or renew membership in the WCHA so that services like this can continue. See http://www.wcha.org/wcha/ to learn more about the WCHA and http://www.wcha.org/join.php to renew.

Kathy