This past August, while I was riding my bike along one of my usual routes through Seattle’s northeast neighborhoods, I saw a moving truck backed onto the gravel parking spot in front of a white-clapboard single-story house. Sticking out from the back of the truck were four wooden rods with stainless-steel sleeves on the ends. I thought they looked like the ends of take-apart paddles and coasted up to the truck to take a closer look. I met the young couple, Kelly and Samantha, who were in the process of loading the truck, and when I asked about the paddles, they showed them to me and Kelly said, “If you want them, they’re yours.”The paddles were homemade and very long. I was about to say that I didn’t need them when Kelly added, “If you want the canoe they’re for, you can have that too. It’s in the back yard.” I wasn’t expecting to be interested in it either, but it was a plywood lapstrake canoe and I recognized it by its straight raked sternpost as a Piccolo, designed by Robert Baker. I biked home, got my car, and drove back for the canoe and its paddles.As I was in the last few days of getting this issue of Small Boats finished, I needed to take a break and took the canoe to paddle around Foster Island, part of a park on the shore of Lake Washington. The island is just a third of a mile long, surrounded by marsh and waterlilies, and separated from the mainland by only a creek-like passage that is shallow enough to wade across.
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Your writing is always a pleasure to read. I can relate to the various mishaps in this story. Sometimes my day starts like this and I think about putting my sailboat back on the trailer and going home. Fortunately things usually get better as the day progresses.
A Lovely day on the water…
Great root beer story! A real coffee spurter..!
Some boating days are like that! (Yeah, they are)
But it’s always good to be on the water!
As a life long paddler and in my upper 70s, I have discovered these lightweight Adirondack-style canoes and the places they can take you . I paddle along the south Jersey coast where we have extensive marshes and there is lot of wildlife to see in these tidal creeks. Still learning that the easier the boat is to use, the more use it will see.
Great find and free!!
Most “free” boats require unanticipated attention.
I love free stuff too. The pleasure derived from paddling someone’s gifted vessel can not be surpassed. I was given a 1970s-era Grumman 17(not a wooden piece of art like the Piccolo but still a watertight paddling vessel) and after replacing the center thwart with a padded folding seat, I can paddle it with an extra long double bladed paddle and don’t have the oil-drum sound as the bow hits a wave.