It seems to me that members of the Wooden Canoe Heritage Association should not ignore the historical, collectible, antique, oddity, curiosity, rarity, novelty, traditional value of an unusual canoe such as a sponson canoe.
Auto enthusiasts do not keep Model T Fords or Stanley Steamers because they are good cars for highway travel; airplane buffs don’t keep Stearmans or Bonanzas or Otters because they are the best way to fly cross-country. Neither should we spurn an unusual or the sometimes impractical canoe because it is not an ordinary or all-purpose craft -- it should be valued precisely because of its unique nature.
As noted above, a 16’ HW is about the most common canoe there is. Why turn an uncommon canoe into just another one of “the most common canoe there is’? Uncommon canoes -- 9’ Sairy Gamps, 20’ Grand Lakers, 32’ War Canoes -- have a value and an interest all their own, in large part because they are uncommon.
And as a further matter, discussions of sponsons in these forums tend to ignore the actual purpose of sponsons -- safety.
Most members of the WCHA are at least moderately skilled paddlers who know how to swim, who are comfortable with the tender nature of canoes, and are comfortable both on the water and in the water. We don’t worry much about going out in a small, narrow tippy boat. As a result, the designed utility of sponsons is given short shrift.
But Sue Audette notes in her history, “In an age when many people could not swim, sponsons were very reassuring and customer response was positive.” Sponsons do make a canoe very difficult to capsize -- early Old Town catalogs stated: “A sponson Canoe is very hard to upset. It is particularly fitted for all who wish a paddling, rowing, and sailing canoe combined.” Later catalogs pictured three or more people sitting on the gunwale of a sponson canoe without swamping it. The Old Town Canoe Company: Our First Hundred Years, p. 19
Sponsons today still give stability to a canoe, and there are still people who are nervous in boats, and people who are not swimmers. So if your social circles might include such a person (and you might not know who they are -- people tend not to broadcast the things that make them nervous), a sponson canoe might still be actually practical. I’m not a sailor, so I don’t know if they are actually useful on a canoe that is sailed -- Benson could perhaps speak to that.