C-Forum

I just bought a used Mad River Howler from a nice gentleman in McLean (VA). He had bought the boat some time ago from an older fellow who was selling off all of his boats. The hull is in pretty good shape - the gunwales need replacement, having multiple splices with some rotten edges around the splices.

It is setup with triple kneeling thwarts - tandem or solo. I suspect they are weighted too heavily to the rear for our usage, but I'm not sure, and it is hard to get a feel for what the balance should be on such a rockered boat.

Today I took it out for the first time paddling with my 80 lb, 8 year old son. I'm about 175 lbs. It was clearly squatting significantly in the stern, which made wave surfing really interesting with the highly rockered stern - it almost felt like we were splatting on a wave, as the boat kept sliding further and further upstream on the wave - it is a wave surfing machine. Also, it is so narrow my son could get pretty decent strokes in the bow.

I see 2 main uses of the boat for our family.

1. My wife or I may solo it some. I bought a Shacho for her, and I expect that to be her main boat for paddling, but it is possible there could be times she might want to use this instead. When she paddles her Shacho I also might be in it solo.

2. I'll paddle it tandem with my kids - 8 & 11 and say 80 lbs and 95 lbs, but each are growing.

If I can figure out a good target static trim for the boat, I can figure out where to setup the spots for tandem. I think it may be easiest to figure out a good position for a solo paddler, and work out from there to assess for tandem.

If you can offer input on how to trim the boat that would be great. Thanks.

WWC2:

Since nobody else has jumped in on this one (possibly because very few on this forum use kneeling thwarts (?),) I thought that I'd give it a try.

If your Howler currently has three kneeling thwarts, chances are that the bow and stern thwarts are WAY too far apart to be useful for varying paddler weights. The farther from center they are, the more that the weight differential matters. (...and, for that matter, the more poorly the boat will turn and the more poorly it will recover from drops...)

So, a suggestion:

Eliminate the center thwart.

Move the bow and stern thwarts in to the center (each a similar distance) until they are about 36" - 40" apart.

Set the bow kneeling thwart so that it is level rather than angled downward at the bow (as most are.)

(You may have to install an additional thwart in the bow or the stern for rigidity.)

When paddling tandem, this positioning will allow for a much greater weight differential between bow and stern paddlers before causing handling problems, as each paddler's weight will be working on a much shorter lever arm from the center. (Although with a really light bow paddler, it helps to put the gear bags way up in the bow.)

When paddling solo, just use the bow thwart and paddle the sucker with the stern acting as bow (I'd say paddle it backwards, but some might take that wrongly.) The balance will not be perfect, but it will be darned close.

I have set my tandem boats up this way for years, and just had the opportunity to set up a new Millbrook AC/DC in this fashion. I've found that the handling of the boats as tandems is about as good as one can get for varying weight paddlers (and is MUCH better overall) and that the solo handling is pretty darned good.

If the idea of placing the paddlers so close together seems odd, just look at the difference between the C2 slalom boats from 25 years ago and the ones that are racing now. (though I am in no way a racer...)

These mods do not depend on a particular design, but they may be inappropriate for a wildly asymmetrical hull.

Hope this helps. Give me a holler if more info is needed or if you find that the idea is just ridiculous.

Be well and keep those kids on the water!

al


.

Sailplanes and canoes have similar weight trim issues, in one incorrect trim causes great surfing, in the other incorrect trim causes terminal "purling".

A sailplane trim correcting adjustments as applied to a canoe: find the canoes centre balance point and mark it. Guesstimate the desired position of the stern paddler, mark that and then measure that distance in inches from the marked canoe centre balance point.
Multiply the inches times your weight, say 24 inches X 175 lbs = 4200 (this is called the "Moment"; I don't know why, it just is)

Now reverse the process. Take your 4200 and divide it by your sons weight, 80lbs, and you will have the distance in inches he needs to be forward of the canoes centre balance point so that 4200=4200.
In his case 4200/80lbs=52.5 inches forward of centre.
If this not a workable bow kneeling thwart position then reposition the stern kneeling thwart closer to centre, recalculate a new Moment, and then do a new bow position distance until the two positions match in "Moment"

As he gains weight and eats you out of house and home you will be able to dry land recalculate and move the thwart back, or even pre rig positions allowing for such an eventuality.
Say 4200/110 lbs = 38 inches forward.
In short it is a bunch of jumped up leverage and weight and equilibrium.

(Since you can't move the seats in sailplanes you add weights under the seat positions until you reach the "All up limit"-- in trim but now too heavy to fly. I guess in a canoe you could do the same, add lead weights under the bow seat until you reach the "All sunk limit")
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Thanks to you both - I appreciate your brainstorming.

I think I have about figured it out since my earlier post. This hull is radically asymmetrical, which has been my challenge - it was not intuitive to figure out what should be level, but after some study of the boat, and matching heights off level ground to the published heights for each end (with the rear end some 5" higher than the bow"), I determined that the gunwale in the middle of the boat should be level when the boat is level. That may be intuitive in general, but this hull shape is so wild I was not convinced of that at first until after a bit of review.

So, I've now located the solo position - I found it was about 5-6" further forward than where the prior owner had it setup. I did this yesterday with a loose saddle, a carpenters level, and floating on the nearest water I could find. Beyond sitting "level", the boat paddled well at this trim - I could also see the level's bubble move just by leaning forward or back at this location. I'd not paddled it solo yet and it is a fun boat - the narrowness is great both for paddle position and hull speed.

What I plan to do for the tandem positions is to locate the stern as close as I can to the solo position, and then balance it out with my son in front. Given how far to the rear the prior solo position was, I think the prior stern position was also likely excessively to the rear.

I've done this sort of balancing before on a boat that is fairly symmetrical - pretty straightforward. Here, everything about the hull is so asymetrical that I don't think you can realistically determine other than with in the water trim measurements (since the wetted area for each inch of displacement differs so much for the bow and stern).