I live in an area where there are a lot of quiet sloughs, little lakes, and slow-moving rivers, but there are only a few launch ramps. With my trailered boats I have been going to the same four places for decades and feel cut off from all the opportunities the region has to offer. I can cartop my canoe, but it’s too heavy to carry and requires a cart, and my kayaks are all long enough to be awkward to carry and not well suited for narrow winding streams and half-acre ponds. Iain Oughtred’s Stickleback may be among the smallest of small boats, but I wouldn’t regard its diminutive size as a limitation. On the contrary, it would be just the right boat to overcome the limitations of all of my larger vessels. The 37 steam-bent frames give a traditionally planked hull the look and appeal of the double-paddle canoes of the 19th century. Glued-plywood lapstrake construction has the advantage of a more easily maintained interior.
Photographs and video by the author
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Reading this article and looking at the pictures took me back to the 1980s and ’90s when I used to exhibit my line of solo canoes (13′-16′) at wooden boat shows where I watched helplessly as hoards of burly men (some well over 200 lbs.) hurried past my display to get to other builders offering Wee Lassie replicas. Don’t get me wrong, these adorable, beautifully modeled craft make wonderful vessels for children and very small adults, but few of those strapping men seemed to consider that the original that inspired those miniature canoes was designed for a 90 lbs. tuberculosis sufferer in a time before outboard wakes were a serious concern. Some of the speeds claimed for this boat in this article are way beyond the efficient hull speed of such a short boat, and some of the waves generated by big, strong paddlers appear steep enough to swamp this boat in the event of a sudden stop or sharp turn. I’m out of the canoe business now, so it’s only as a public service that I say, if you weigh over 120 pounds, and you intend to paddle on something other than protected ponds, you’ll be much better served by a canoe that is 2′ to 5′ longer and 10 to 20 pounds heavier. Rushton designed plenty of them. They’re gorgeous too. Don’t get me wrong: Tom Regan made a beautiful job of this canoe and, anyone who properly fits this diminutive craft, should feel lucky to have it.
For the 1% readers who are expert boat builders. Can’t Ian even design a 10′ canoe that mortals can build?
Just search “Wee Lassie” and you’ll find many options for building this much-loved design. The inspiration was the Wee Lassie canoe made in 1893 by J. H. Rushton for William West Durant of Raquette Lake, New York.
Every builder who sees this great little pond jumper can’t resist making their own version, myself included. While strictly speaking, Andre is right about big guys in little boats. But if I were trout fishing, jumping from pond to pond in a place this canoe was designed for, like the St. Regis Canoe Area, it would be a pleasure to travel so light.
There’s a book , Rushton and His Times in American Canoeing, available through the Adirondack Museum, with an appendix of measured drawings and offset tables, including Nessmuck’s Sairy Gamp.