Customize Your Canoe

Mesh seats provide better drainage than bench seats

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Remember the "Four Cs"? You'll feel much more Confident in a canoe if you are Comfortable and you feel you have sufficient Contact with the craft to Control it properly.

Modifications to the boat (known as "outfitting") that improve contact, comfort, and control are important for flatwater as well as whitewater. Flatwater has a nasty habit of quickly ceasing to be flat, and of suddenly demanding optimum control. Winds can quickly increase and whip up choppy waves, and motorboat wakes are a fact of life.

Below, I outline comfort enhancers targeted at your rear end, knees, ankles, and back.

Any good paddling specialty store will stock a selection of the necessary canoe "outfitting" accessories and attachments. If you are not a do-it-yourselfer, the store should have technicians who can outfit the boat for you.

A Cushier Seat

Some seats are quite hard and uncomfortable for long-term sitting. Here's how to make things a bit more cush for your tush:

• Select cane mesh or webbing seats for resilient comfort. They'll be drier too, because splashes drain through.
• Mesh seats provide better drainage than bench seats.
• Take the bite out of hard seats with a purpose-made inflatable Therm-a-Rest style pad such as the Cascade Designs' Canoe Seat ($37) or Touring Seat ($46). Closed-cell pads, either purpose-made or simply cut from a piece of low-cost "blue camping foam mat" work well, too. Make the pad as small as possible so that splashes can't fall onto it and run under your bum.
• Or build your own soft, vented canoe seat to avoid "Boaters Bum" syndrome.
  
  
  Article and photos © Keith Morton, 2000.