Old Town Royalex Canoe | 15' Pathfinder / Camper 15' with Ash Seats and Yolk

Description: Enjoy the water with this very versatile canoe! It's lightweight, maneuverable, and durable. Take it from lakes to estuaries to Oregon and Washington's plentiful class 2 whitewater rivers, and small streams. The Pathfinder is a nimble pocket tandem canoe that can handle a mountain of camping gear. It has new webbed seats with ash frames and a refinished original ash yolk, sealed with 7 coats of non-toxic, 100% tung oil, each layer cured in the sun last summer. As one woodworker put it, tung oil has a "punishing" finishing schedule. It was a labor of love and results in a natural, non-toxic polymerized oil finish. The hull is in good condition with typical scratches from use. No dents or folds. Gunwales are low-maintenance vinyl and the front and back have built-in grab handles.Use it on a solo trip by flipping it around, or load it up with a couple of friends and a pooch. It can carry up to 820 lbs! Technically 14 10", the Pathfinder is a shorter version of the 16' Camper. Compared to 16 footers, it's a nice size for storing and comes in at a light 57 lbs, making it easier to load on the car or portage. Made out of the very desirable and sadly discontinued Royalex, which boasts the best weight to strength ratio of an canoe material available. It'll outlast your grandkids's grandkids. The Pathfinder paddles surprisingly well as solo boat, too, and with the load capacity, it works great as a solo wilderness tripper. Excellent initial and secondary stability make this model a fantastic platform for kids, fishing, fly fishing, wildlife viewing, photography, birding, looking through binoculars without getting sea sick, setting crab pots in bay, or duck hunting. You can stand up in it easily. With minimal draft and the Royalex hull, this boat great for smaller streams and low water, gliding over rocks and not bottoming out like other hull designs. It turns on a dime, which helps when navigating rocky creeks. Get out there and explore! This is a really sweet boat. WAAAAY lighter and nicer than the Coleman, Discovery and Saranac models out there. SpecsLength 14’ 10” Width 36 inchesDepth 13.5 inches Weight 57 pounds Seats: Ash frame and nylon webbing.Yolk: AshFinish: tung oilGunwales: vinylYear made: 1992Next owner: you :)Trolling motor compatible ----------------- About Royalex Aluminum was the material of choice for most canoe trippers until the late 1970s when a memorable Old Town Canoe Company advertisement changed the face of canoeing forever.In 1978, Old Town touted the supreme durability of its 17-foot Tripper canoe by tossing one from the roof of its Maine factory. The canoe escaped unscathed. Since then, Royalex has been the go-to material for Arctic river trippers, summer camps and whitewater boaters alike. Uniroyal Tire Company chemists designed the vulcanized plastic known as Royalex in the mid-20th century. The material consists of a single inner layer of heat- expandable acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) foam sandwiched between mid-layers of tough and stiff ABS plastic and exterior surfaces of ultraviolet-resistant vinyl. The material is designed to be heat-molded into complex shapes that withstand impact and retain their original form. According to Old Town Canoe historian and author Susan Audette, the first canoe constructed of Uniroyal’s patented Royalex material was built by Maine’s Thompson Boat Company in 1964. Old Town became the first to popularize the material when it produced its 16-foot Chipewyan in Oltonar—its proprietary name for the material—in 1972. Vermont’s Mad River Canoe followed quickly with its explorer.Up until the mid 2010's when Royalex was no longer available, canoe manufacturers ordered sheets of Royalex with customized thickness and colors from Indiana-based plastics manufacturer Spartech, who acquired the Royalex formula from Uniroyal in 2000. The building process involved heating canoe-sized sheets of the material in a “humongous pizza oven” set at about 320 degrees Fahrenheit. After about 20 minutes in the oven, the material is vacuum formed over a mold in a process that takes a team of builders only 10 minutes. The most time consuming part of building a Royalex canoe is outfitting it with gunwales and trim. Nova Craft was able to make 20 Royalex canoes on a good day and produced about 1,500 per year. In 1975, a 17-foot Old Town Penobscot in Oltonar / Royalex sold for $775; today, the same canoe in 2010 for nearly $1,600, and in 2024 would be $3,500. Due to its near-indestructibility, a Royalex canoe will always be a good investment. It’s something that can be passed down from generation to generation. ----------------- Use this for down river tripping, expedition canoe.Old Town is a well-regarded canoe brand, similar to other high-end canoe manufacturers such as Mad River, Wenonah, Northstar, Bell, Nova Craft, Souris, Navarro, and Loon. Nova Craft Canoe of London, Ontario. Better than Clipper, Langford, Royalex, Sawyer, Jensen Grumman. Similar to Penobscot, Swift, Algonquin, solo plus, Prospector, Aurora, Adirondack. Light weight and durable like fiberglass and aluminum, and more durable than ultra light carbon fiber and kevlar boats. Not quite an ultra light canoe, but still dang light and much lighter though a bit uglier than a vintage cedar strip and aramid boats. Good for wilderness trips, kayak, I prefer Royalex over its replacement Tuf-weave. Similar models include the Starlight, Tripper, Reflection, Mistral, Explorer, Freedom, Malecite, Horizon, Tahoe, Hunter, Adirondack, Advantage, Fisherman, Spirit II, Saranac, Sundowner, Discovery, Pack, Pathfinder, Raven.

Price: 1300 USD

Location: Portland, Oregon

End Time: 2024-09-26T21:33:21.000Z

Shipping Cost: N/A USD