Rob Roy Solo Canoe

Product Description

A classic solo canoe of the style of the earliest recreational canoes, designed to be paddled with a double-bladed paddle.

The origins of the Rob Roy canoe go back to Victorian adventurer John MacGregor, who popularised the concept of canoeing as a recreational sport with his 1866 book ‘A Thousand Miles in the Rob Roy Canoe’. After seeing indigenous birch bark canoes and Inuit kayaks, he designed what he considered to be the ideal craft for cruising Europe's canals and rivers. He named it Rob Roy, after his famous outlaw relative. The type of canoe he favoured were paddled with a double-bladed paddle and often rigged for sailing. They were usually decked, but with a large, open cockpit.

MacGregor's books were an inspiration to early American canoe builders and this type of solo canoe, paddled with a double-bladed paddle, dominated recreational canoeing into the next century.

There are many possibilities for fitting out the boat to your own preferences. This hull design can be kept as a simple, lightweight canoe for fast cruising, but has also been built in a version that is fully-decked in bookmatched walnut veneer, with sliding seat, foot rest, floorboards and hand-rubbed varnish.

This Rob Roy Solo canoe design, by Bear Mountain Boats, is constructed using the strip-planking method and sheathed in fibreglass for a light and strong hull without internal ribs.

Ted Moores of Bear Mountain Boats is the author of Canoecraft, the standard reference book for wood-strip canoe building. The book is recommended to accompany the kit or plans. It is packed with tips and techniques and has inspired countless first-time canoe builders around the world.

Length

3.92 m (12′ 10½″)

Maximum beam

685 mm (27″)

Beam waterline

622 mm (24½″)

Beam gunwale

685 mm (27″)

Bow height

432 mm (17″)

Centre depth

260 mm (10.2″)

Displacement

95 kg (210 lb)

Optimum capacity

50-113 kg (110-250 lb)

Draught

100 mm (4″)

Wetted surface

1.54 m² (16.6 sq ft)

Weight to immerse

79 lb/in

Prismatic coefficient

0.535

Weight

11.5-18 kg (25-40 lb)

Watch us build a Bear Mountain canoe in this one-minute overview video:

Kits

We manufacture our kits to the highest standard using European-grown Paulownia for the planking strips. Uniquely, the strips in our Bear Mountain Boats kits have not only a bead-and-cove profile but also a pre-cut finger joint at each end, making the neat joining of strips even easier for builders at home.

The kits include:

• Plans
• Instructions booklet
• CNC-cut building forms
• Paulownia strips with bead-and-cove edges and finger joints on both ends
• Ash blanks for decks
• Ash stem strips
• Ash gunwales (inwales and outwales) with scarf joints machined for joining
• Ash thwart
• Cane seat
• Waterproof glue for the strips
• Epoxy resin and activator
• Dispensing pumps
• Digital scales
• Epoxy fillers
• Woven glass fabric on a roll
• Free technical support from a competent builder

Please note that the kit does not include the box beam strongback for mounting the building forms on. You can either use a straight length of suitable timber or order the box-beam strongback we supply.

What else do I need?

Strongback

This strongback is made up of CNC-cut MDF panels that fit together to form a strong and stiff box beam measuring 200 mm × 200 mm and long enough to build the boat. You'll need a pair of trestles or sawhorses to raise it to a comfortable working height.

Plans and Instructions (not required by kit purchasers)

The plans contain sufficient information to make it possible to build the boat from scratch rather than a kit. The plans are printed in colour and include scale plans and full size drawings for all the forms.