This page contains a Flash digital edition of a book.
LUNCH BOX HERO. PHOTO: KAYDI PYETTE


Lean Machine


THE ADVANTAGE BY WENONAH CANOE


During a roundtable discussion with industry leaders, Bill Kueper of Wenonah Canoe proposed the idea that we’ve been selling people the wrong canoes. Why have we been selling tandem tripping canoes to peo- ple who do only one big canoe trip per year? Why are we not selling them the canoes they will paddle most often? I look out my office window at an 18-kilometer stretch of slow moving


river. For years I’ve talked about paddling at lunchtime, but never did it. Why not? According to Bill, I owned the wrong boats. He sent me an Ultra- light Wenonah Advantage, a boat he thought I’d paddle more often. The Advantage was first released way back in 1982 as a competitive


racing canoe. The legend goes that it was so popular that a couple years later designer Dave Kruger tweaked his design, adding more buoyancy so that it is both fast and seaworthy when used for pleasure paddling. At 16 feet and six inches the Advantage is all waterline with virtually


no rocker, making it fast and true. Its shallow 13-inch center depth offers less for the wind to play with. If you took a cross section you might say it’s shaped like the bottom half of a hollowed-out butternut squash—wider and round at the waterline for stability with aggressive tumblehome at the gunnels where you don’t want the width. The day the Advantage was delivered to the office I grabbed a bent-


shaft paddle, threw the feathery 32 pounds of Kevlar and aluminum over my shoulder like a kayak, and snuck down to the river. I wasn’t sure how tippy these racing canoes were. If I was going to fall out, I didn’t want an audience of editors applauding my first swim in years. You sit in the Advantage on a tractor seat fixed on a lightweight alu-


minum frame that is magically bonded to the hull. Your feet rest out in front of you on an aluminum foot rail. Both are adjustable in seconds to properly trim the canoe. Turns out, I didn’t need to be so shy. In only a few minutes I went from,


“How stable is this thing?” to “How fast will it go?” to “I wonder how long I can keep this pace?” to “I wonder if I could finish the Muskoka River X?” (see page 44 for an in-depth look at the world’s toughest single-day canoe race). To learn more about stroke rates, body position and edge control, I asked


everyone I knew for training tips. Hearing about the Advantage, marathon canoe racers told me that in the mid-‘80s you either raced the Advantage or were beaten by them. As the race world advanced so did radical canoe designs to the point


that, if you ask me, they don’t look much like canoes any more. The Ad- vantage then became a training canoe and efficient wilderness tripper for the Boundary Waters. Seeing the popularity of the Advantage in the backcountry, Wenonah re-


leased a slightly more relaxed and higher-capacity tripping version in 1993. While the Prism remains one of their top-selling solo canoes, the Advantage recently moved to Wenonah’s list of niche models, officially retired from their catalog but available for special order by recreational racers and cruisers like me with desk jobs only short walks from the water. I paddled the Advantage more last fall than any other canoe in the


barn. It is so grab-and-go easy to get on the water. It is exhilaratingly fast. Going from my Pros- pector to the Advantage is like trading my full sus- pension mountain bike for Lance’s Tour winning Trek. I can’t see myself getting too serious about marathon canoe racing, but I think I’ll order my Advantage in the 29-pound graph- ite version, just in case. —Scott MacGregor


Wenonah Canoe Advantage


specs Length ..................................................16’6” Width at gunwales.......................22.5” Depth at bow ......................................19” Depth at center ..................................13” Depth at stern .....................................14”


jDIGITAL EXTRA: Click here to get an on-water preview of the Wenonah Advantage.


Weight: 32 lbs (Kevlar Ultra-light) $2,499 29 lbs (Graphite Ultra-light) $3,099


www.wenonah.com www.canoerootsmag.com | 33


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64