C-Forum

So I bought my new boat last month. Thanks to everybody on this board I finally choosed a LL Remix 69, and am very happy about it. I usually buy used boats but in this case it was quite impossible, besides I found the price for a new empty hull was very reasonable, so I just went for it.

The outfit I finally setted is, strangely enough, something I never seen anywhere else but it seems to work great so far. As some of you requested I am posting here what I did.

I call it the appaloosa squish-in setup. An image is worth a thousand words:

http://picasaweb.google.ca/marcgauthier ... directlink

Very little to explain, really. I took the mesurement of the front cockpit's height and cutted the floor of the saddle 1 1/2 inch to fit this. That wasn't enough to touch the pegs at all. This did change the position of the body in the saddle so I had to dragon skin the interior of the knee holes a bit to change their angle, also scraped back the backbench and saddle height to taste; 7 1/2 in my case.
Then I trimmed the sides of the saddle about an inch on each side, working my way up in a round movement, imitating the boat's shape as I could.
It was a little fight to squeeze that bulky foamy thingy in but hey, it's just foam after all! Worked the saddle's front bottom to fit the weird shape of the front post and added a spacer there. For the back I had to cut a corner out of the rear post's bottom to accomodate the saddle, and added a bunch of foam blocks to make the whole thing stiff enough. Sure a big kick could move the saddle's rear on sides, but is stiff enough for a test and I decided to wait before to glue it in place to make sure of the position.
Not much to say about the hip pads; they suck for now I have to redo them from scratch.

Took it on a lake once, then at a local class 3 river last saturday and the saddle didn't move too much, even after running a couple of rapids without me in.

Now the question that's left on the back of my mind is: why nobody else seems to have done this before? Either a saddle like that is too expensive to most folks or simply nobody cared about posting this type of stuff just yet. Chances are also it was done before and I oversaw it.


My first comments about the boat itself.

I am a very intermediate paddler and can essentially compare the boat with the other ones I owned and paddled so far: a prelude, a smaller riverplay C1 (perception amp) and my big MR ME. Oh yeah, and I am about 160# and 5'11".

The boat is very responsive. About half the weight of my prelude and it shows also. When leaning forward in an aggressive paddling position, the boat is VERY carvy, accelerates fast and loose its speed almost as fast too. The thing that amazed me the most is how much control you get from leaning the boat on its sides.

Another good surprise was that when sitting back in a more relaxed position, the boat then gets a very nice glide and shows some fair tracking. The cockpit isn't as small and low as my other C1 so I was even able to get back at that good old "swing & pry" type of paddling. That was way unefficient and uncumfortable in my other C1, besides, I had to paddle more intensely to follow other folks in their big boats. Now I am back at sugar cookie-chatting with them when the river is calm, with a little extra effort to follow but that's it.

The boats also rolls very easily. Primary stability is better than my prelude (was very poor) and secondary probably just as good. The boat sides are quite rounded up so it doesn't seems to "kick" you on sides like that square-bottom narrow amp.

The fact that the remix is available in different sizes is also fun, now I wonder what the 79 would feel like for me...

I have to say it again; I would never have made such a move without reading through on cboats forum and a big thanks to everybody I previously spoke with to get advices of all kind.

That's about it, hope this helps anyone out there!

See ya on the river,

Marc Gauthier.

I thought about doing a conversion like that but it would be to expensive for me. Looking at the pics i think you prob want to cut the saddle way lower for c1 also get rid of those foot pegs your feet should lay flat on the hull if you can put your toes on the foot pegs like you would in a canoe then your saddle is way to high. Otherwise it looks good... Just my 2 cents

The last time I used footpegs in a C-1 I about pinched my toes off when I slid over a pointed rock that flexed the hull up. I realized they weren't really doing anything for me and I took them out.

That does look cool, though - I've seen all foam conversions before, just not with an Appaloosa. Nice review! That boat continues to be of interest to me...

Thanks again guys for the spare change!

Again, I'm no such experience paddler but here are my takes on these two issues:

Saddle height: it may look high but even within C1s, I do distinguish between squirt boats (low low low saddle), riverplay/freestyle boats (my amp has 5.5 inch saddle, bulkhead + lapstrap no pegs) and creek/river runner boats like this one. If you look at the specs, the remix 69 is longer than the taureau, SF or quake. It is also the exact same width (26ish) than my prelude. All these plastic tubs usually come with an appaloosa-type saddle with pegs and a rather high setup. I thought myself it was impossible to fit a saddle like this in a C1 because of the cockpit room, but when I did the mesurements at my local retailer I came out of the store with both a boat and a saddle!

Pegs: cutting the saddle's floor the pegs are now pretty close to the hull, and since I am not barefoot my toes won't get there anyways. I use neoprene rivershoes that I can easily slip out of in case of emergency. These are absolutely useless for swimming but do welcome rocks or stand up occasions better than barefoot I found. I like bulkheads and if you want to stick in your boat when you need it's a choice between pegs or straps. I like better pegs myself whenever the saddle is high enough to allow it.

Have fun on the river!

Nice job! Don't sweat the saddle height. I'm at 7" in my Sith & the Woodie. You've gotta be comfortable.

Please consider adding your boat to the C-Boats Conversion database so folks can easily access the info. You've done the review so now it's pretty much cut & paste.

http://cboats.net/c_db/form2.php

very nice !!

But how did you get all this foam INTO the boat? Did you glue it together in there ?

Yep, the appaloosa comes as a one piece saddle and it's pretty big. But you don't want to break it and loose the integrity. So you have to fight with it to squish it in there. I did squeeze the bulkhead part first, then insert it as far as I could in the bow, then I had to remove the pegs and the metal rod holding the assembly to get it loose a bit, and kicked it in.

As I said, I did not even glue the saddle yet, but I did a class 3 river with it simply in the boat without any glue and it did hold pretty good so you can guess how squeezed it is in there, particularly the bulkhead. Even the rear part of the saddle won't come up if you lift it; you can lift the boat if you pull up on the unglued foam backbench! Essentially, the rear foam post (included when you buy the boat) hold the rear part and the bulkhead is holded by the cockpit rim... Hope it makes it clearer.

I had no batteries in my camera when I did the job, wish I could have taken pictures of the different steps. Now you can bet I just don't feel like pulling it out again. I had to put it in and out three different times for adjustments when I did the whole job, took me about 2 hours total, including gluing the knee pads. Ever heard about such a quick conversion?

Mike W. wrote:Nice job! Don't sweat the saddle height. I'm at 7" in my Sith & the Woodie. You've gotta be comfortable.

Please consider adding your boat to the C-Boats Conversion database so folks can easily access the info. You've done the review so now it's pretty much cut & paste.

http://cboats.net/c_db/form2.php

Mike, I beg to differ. Comfort is WAY overrated. POerformance is what counts. I lowered the saddle in the Ceemweaver to ~3.5 " now, and while I am usually in tears when getting out after one hour and stagger around like a drunk for the next 10 minutes, but I can control the boat so much better now. We are not called Pain Boaters for nothing ...
KNEEL AND PRAY TO THE GODS OF PAIN !!!

TGG!

the great gonzo wrote:
Mike, I beg to differ. Comfort is WAY overrated. POerformance is what counts. I lowered the saddle in the Ceemweaver to ~3.5 " now, and while I am usually in tears when getting out after one hour and stagger around like a drunk for the next 10 minutes, but I can control the boat so much better now. We are not called Pain Boaters for nothing ...
KNEEL AND PRAY TO THE GODS OF PAIN !!!

You are right gonzo, the lower your saddle the more stable you are and the more eficient your strokes gets. Ever tried lowering down to none? Apparently they also make some double-bladed sticks for that and it works great!

Just kidding! I also am in pain after an hour in my amp at around 5.5in saddle, wish I could go lower but can't imagine what it would be like.

Still, it's great to have a low saddle for squirting your favorite playspot, but when downriver with a group you have to follow and stay in your boat for extended lenght of times. So my remix just had to be comfy... guess it'll make me practice that roll a lot!

marclamenace wrote:Ever tried lowering down to none? Apparently they also make some double-bladed sticks for that and it works great!

marclamenace wrote:Still, it's great to have a low saddle for squirting your favorite playspot, but when downriver with a group you have to follow and stay in your boat for extended lenght of times. So my remix just had to be comfy... guess it'll make me practice that roll a lot!

Well, rolling a lot kills your speed and makes it hard to follow, too !

TGG!

in my Remix 59 I had at first 6,3" but wasn`t happy with the stability. Then I changed to 5,5" and that made a huge difference.