The Ellesmere Comes to Sandpoint

 

We brought the Boreal Design Ellesmere back from Plains, MT. The drive between Sandpoint and Plains is very pretty, following along the Clark Fork River. It takes a leisurely two-plus hours. There is a short stretch west of Plains where one must drive more slowly because of the occasional presence of bighorn mountain sheep. We did not see any on this trip, but have in the past. 

Initial questions to settle: 

Q1. Will I need to adjust the seat back, as I must often do?

Q2. Is it too big for me? Maybe I need to pad it.

Fresh Answers:

A1. I did need to adjust the seat back, using minicell foam so my back could be well supported when sitting erect. I crushed a disk in my lower back many years ago and a supportive seat back is crucial.

A2. It is a bit big for me, so I padded the hull interior at my hips.

What else did I find? I also padded the hull interior further forward, so my knees had enough contact to attempt rolling. And since I like a keel strip, I installed a 2" wide strip of EazyKeel. I've used this product before and have found it quite adequate for the kind of paddling I do e.g. no barnacle encrusted landings, rather on sand or non jagged stones.

The kayak behavior was more or less as expected. The Ellesmere seems to crave at least a wee bit of skeg. Perhaps I will load the stern more heavily to judge the effect. At slightly below 140 pounds, I may be lighter than the kayak expects. I do like the 'dial' used to deploy the rope skeg. 

I am no longer a camper, but the kayak has plenty of room for packing gear. In particular, unlike some of the skeg kayaks I have owned, this skeg box is quite small so the rear hatch has more usable room than I expected. My prior Ellesmere had a more intrusive skeg box.

How light is the kayak? Boreal Design specified this kevlar version at 46 pounds. I haven't actually weighed it, but probably will when the time comes to sell it.  Supposedly some vendors weigh a kayak without deck lines, seat & seat back, and hatch covers. I don't think that is true in this case. It feels to be somewhere in the 40 to 50 pound area.

Is the kayak fast? My prior Ellesmere provided my fastest time in the now defunct Sand Creek Challenge. That was 12 years ago and my paddling speed is significantly slower now.  Can I keep up with a group? Only when I am solo, a rather small group.

As of today I am precisely 84.5 years old. This is likely the last kayak I will buy as my primary kayak. However, I may want a wooden kayak so my wife can shoot flaming arrows at me to provide a Viking funeral. She is clearly motivated and her practice has been going well.

 

Boreal Design Ellesmere

In the last article, I related how I discovered that the Boreal Design Pakesso would happily leecock and was resistant to changing its ways - so I returned it to the seller. I had a Boreal Design Ellesmere when in my mid 70s and quite liked it. I was hoping that the Pakesso would be a smaller version of the Ellesmere - not so!

As it turns out, there was a Kevlar Ellesmere in Somers, MT. Rather far to drive, but the owner was willing to meet me in Plains, MT only a 2 hour drive. So on the day prior to kayak pick up, my wife and I will drive to Hot Springs, MT (near Plains) to stay at the Symes Hotel. We had stayed at Symes in the deep past, quite the funky establishment. The next day we will meet the Ellesmere seller in Plains.

So what will be my experience, returning to an Ellesmere? My current favorite kayak is my composite CD Squamish, essentially because of its light weight and good behavior. But the Squamish is slow. As a very crude measure of potential speed, I note that the Sound Rowers classification ranks the Squamish at 7.3 and the Ellesmere at 9.0. The Squamish does not weathercock at speeds below 10 knots, but my recollection of the Ellesmere is that it wants a bit of skeg. 

The adventure will continue.