The first time I heard about people modifying the Viper and Ocoee I thought to myself "Why the heck would anyone want to cut down the bow and stern of their Ocoee and pull in the thwarts... this boat is great as it is... isn't it?" Then I saw one that had been altered on the cover of a Dagger catalog... "WOW" would be an understatement. http://www.dagger.com/content/dagger.co ... G%2097.pdf (cover & page 15) Not long after my friend Craig Reidner chopped up his own... radically. Craig cut his almost flat from the center and pulled it in about 4 inches... I paddled it... "HOLY poop" it was insane but Craig weighed about 30lbs less than me and was by all accounts a phenomenal boater. Next... Dewey Ewers aqquired one of Mike Yee's used R-light Ocoee's... apparently the Canadians had done this a few times because that boat was nearly the perfect balance between Craig's and my stock boat. Two days later I secured a set of used gunnels, some stainless screws and I proceeded to rip the vinyl rails off my Ocoee in short order, I chopped it down an inch in the bow and two in the stern... cut the thwarts precisely with the same hack saw I used to cut the ends down and borrowed a belt sander from a neighbor to clean up the excess plastic above the wood. I took the larger deck plates off my old Genesis then cut (hack saw again) and belt sanded them up to fit the new Ocoee because I knew it was going to be a bit wetter ride under certain conditions. Day one in that boat and for the next two years for me was purely nirvana. I paddled it in high water, low water and literally wore the thing out... the foam core on the edges was exposed for a good eight to ten inches on both sides on the chines. Then the SuperFly came out. Even though I loved the new direction that canoes were moving and even though I had this "new" style of canoe... I saved up as much money as I could over the winter ordered a brand new wood trimmed yellow Ocoee that would arrive in spring. The boat came... I outfitted it and paddled it for about a week... and proceeded to chop it up like my old boat. It was close... but it wasn't the same... plus the SpanishFly had just come out and I was broke... I sold the Ocoee and a few other boats... I just didn't need them any longer.
Years passed... time went on... every now and then I tried a new canoe but nothing really ever felt right for me... nothing. Fast forward to last year... and OH JOY... a boat we had just completed for the masses that once again I could 'tinker' with. Don't get me wrong here... I still paddle my more 'stock' boat if I feel I want to be in the most stable and dry boat I can feel confident in or if someone wants to try one out... but if I know it's going to be a day of zipping around the river and having more fun than just getting down something... the initial tweaked version we did comes directly off the roof racks.
So here we are with tweaked version #2 of this boat for me. With this one I only slightly altered the width in the middle of the boat but put in two additional thwarts between the center and bow/stern thwarts to gain more control of adjustment in the shape of them. I kept a bit more flare and looseness at the bow but pulled the stern in more aggressively to sharpen the chine/edge. When removing the top of the boat (this hull came decked) I cut it down so I would end up with 16" of depth in the center and then removed in a gradual sweep upwards 3/4" in the bow and just over an 1" in the stern.
Compared...
In closing... no... this modified boat or many previously like it is not the way boats should come from the factory in my opinion... but it doesn't mean people can't and shouldn't tinker with their own boats as they see fit if they want to change certain attributes about it... which clearly one can.
