In our size boats, wider is usually better

Hugh Horton, Contributing Editor, Harrison Township, Michigan

Previously published in Small Craft Advisor, Nov/Dec 2001 Issue No. 12

Up near Lake Michigan's north tip, a big August moon is rising over broad sands. It silhouettes dense woods. Soft talk of safety and marketing. Don Collister, a life-long solo canoe paddler murmurs, “My 40 year old sister-in-law wants a fairly narrow kayak, but she doesn't like the water.”

“So...why?”

“Because it's the thing to do.”

Consumerism may be fine with some things, but this could drown her.
A week before, Howard Rice and I'd sat with morning coffee in Jan and Meade Gougeon's boat shed. They are the brothers of WEST System epoxy.

In this nook of the shed, pictures of 30 years of a boatbuilding force grace the walls: Golden Daisy, Slingshot, Rogue Wave; Russell Brown's proa, Jzero, Whitbread class winner Sabre, a Little American's Cup champ; Jan and Meade's Mac-race dominating trimarans, Adagio and Ollie, their world and North American champion DN ice boats, Meade's sailing canoe Serendipity, and many more. 

Howard Rice read Robert Manry's Tinkerbelle when he was eleven. The thirteen and a half foot Old Town daysailer, with a deck and cabin by Manry, crossed in 78 days from Falmouth, Massachusetts to Falmouth, Cornwall. Howard had been gripped by small boats before Manry, and vice-gripped ever since. At eighteen he sailed his Cape Dory Typhoon from Newport, Rhode Island to the Bahamas. In a Klepper Aerius I with sails, he was the first solo kayaker around Cape Horn. He's a one-design devotee, teaches at the College of the Federated States of Micronesia, and has been paddling mostly narrow boats in Pohnpei the last three years.

“My neighbors on the beach,” Meade said, putting down his coffee, “bought two skinny sea kayaks. They have the gear, look like people in magazines, and think they¹re safe.” He held up his hands, “But they're not paddlers...and don't seem to have a boating background! When I flipped Serendipity in the Gulf I was lucky....”

“The water was warm,” Jan nodded. “You have 50-55 years experience, a background of seamanship.”

“And flotation,” Howard said.

“Plenty,” Meade's eyebrows lifted, “and a wide boat. But what chance do my neighbors have if they dump in 60 degree water, flotation or not?”