Another Mystery canoe

JClearwater

Wooden Canoes are in the Blood
Jean and I went to the Mohonk Mountain House, new New Paltz, NY, last Sunday for brunch. We walked through the old carriage house/barn which is now a museum filled with old farming implements, carriages, buggies etc. In the second floor loft, up in the rafters were two boats. One was a canvas covered canoe and the second a lapstrake skiff of some sort. Unfortunately the lighting was poor and they were up high out of reach. I had no tape measure and the only camera we had was Jean’s phone. The canoe appeared to be about 14 feet long, no keel, plumb stems. Closed gunwales, tapered rib tops, narrow planking, stem was square in section and terminated on a rib rather than between ribs like an Old Town. Heart shaped decks, severely undercut. Stern seat was trapezoidal and mounted to gunwale, two round wood spacers at rear of seat. Bow seat mounted on a cleat but the cleat appeared to be mounted to the gunwale as a spacer not to the ribs like a Rushton. Directly behind the bow seat and also mounted to the cleat was a “thwart” of sorts at the same level as the seat not at the gunwale line. Behind the bow deck was a carry thwart about a foot in length and shaped the same as the blue mystery canoe the Kathy Klos shared with us. The other thwarts were simple straight pieces without any shaping at all. The most interesting feature was the metal stem bands. They wrapped around the stem and onto the top of the deck in the normal manner but then became “T” shaped with turned down ends that locked the gunwales to the deck. I’ve never seen such a thing. I can’t say what was original and what was not but the canoe was in decent shape all things considered. A couple of poor pictures below.

There was no explanatory sign and no one around to ask questions to.

Enjoy,
Jim C.
 

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