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On 19 Jan 2005 15:50:01 -0800, wrote:
wrote:
In the recent Lee Valley flyer, they advertise heavy duty duct tape.
I wonder how many people got the Red Green joke in the "for
patching a holed canoe". You remember, when Red Green and his
buddies
wanted to go out on the lake, and discovered that the canoe hadn't
been stored behind the back stop at the gun range, instead it was the
back stop!
Whenever I go out in a canoe I take a roll of duct tape along
to patch any holes that 'appear' in the canoe while out and
about. Uncle Red didn't just make that up.
Ayup. A buddy and I turned his 17' Grumman aluminum canoe into a flattened banana shape in a rapid
called "the Silos" on the New River in WV back in the 70's. Ripped a 10 inch gash below the water
line and flattened the bow to the point I couldn't get my legs under the front seat anymore. We
were some 15 miles to the takeout point. No duct tape. We shot the remaining 20+ rapids to the
takeout leaning very heavily to the right to try to keep the rip out of the water.
We drove back to Athens, down to the middle school playground, unloaded it from the VW bug he used
as a transport vehicle and stuck the damaged end into the playground sandpile. Judicious use of an
8 pound sledge on a hunk of firewood (obligatory wood reference to keep this on topic) pounded it
eventually back into a canoe shape. We had the sense to drill holes at each end of the rip before
starting this beating and pounding. You should have seen some of the looks we got from the
passers-by. I guess it is not every day you see a couple of scroungy-looking college kids drinking
beer on a school playground while seemingly taking turns trying to drive a chunk of firewood through
the bottom of a canoe.
Anyway, we got the whole shebang back into canoe shape and slapped a hunk of duct tape on it. My
friend sold it later that year when he upgraded to a Mad River canoe. The guy who bought the
Grumman evidently graduated in a year or so and moved west. Years later my friend was visiting some
other buddys in Bozeman Montana. As they stood talking on the street, here came a Grumman canoe
down the road with an old Ohio registration sticker on it, and a very faded chunk of duct tape in
the same area we had patched.
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