Welcome, Frank--
Old Town 77803 is an 18 foot AA grade (mahogany trimmed) Charles River model canoe with red Western cedar planking, open mahogany gunwales, and mahogany decks, seat frames, and thwarts. Sometimes notations on the scan don't show up well, so I'm not sure if there was a keel originally or not. The canoe was painted black with a gold stripe with turned down ends--- this sounds very striking, and means the gold followed the gunwale-line of the canoe and then followed the downward curve along the lines of the canoe at bow and stern. It's a classic color scheme of the courting canoe or Charles River canoe.
The build record for your canoe is attached below. If this doesn't seem to fit your canoe, we can try again! Scans of approximately 210,000 records were created with substantial grants from the Wooden Canoe Heritage Association (WCHA) and others. Additional information about the project to preserve these records is available at
http://www.wcha.org/ot_records/ if you want more details.
Please join WCHA or make a tax deductible contribution so that services like this can continue. See
http://www.wcha.org/wcha/ to learn more about the WCHA,
http://www.wcha.org/wcha_video.php to watch a 10 minute video about WCHA and our programs and
http://www.wcha.org/join.php to join. If you are already a WCHA member, THANK YOU!
A good all-around resource for restoration and building questions is Stelmok and Thurlow's "The Wood and Canvas Canoe", available on this website at the WCHA store and also at most libraries, eBay, Amazon, etc. Others here have decades of knowledge and you are free to post questions in forums... probably under wood canvas/fiberglass... pictures help, and we LOVE following others' projects!
Kathy
