: I'm thinking about building a canoe stripper this
: winter, but I can't find plans for the type of canoe I'm interested in.
: I'm looking for a high performance solo canoe plans in the 16 - 17 ft
: range.

That is a bit long for a solo canoe. I assume you are either heavier than the average paddler (or lets say over 200 pounds) or are looking at trying to get increased speed from the longer waterline.

If it is the second case, then you may be disappointed if you simply copy the lines. Since the boat gains displacement as the length increases, it will float above the design waterline, and while that will give you less wetted area, it may also give you a shorter waterline.

This is particularly true if you add a bit to the rocker. (If you do not add to the rocker, then the longer boat will be harder to turn -- and paddling a canoe with a single blade paddle is a constant turning effort. Your thrust on the one side of the boat forces the boat to turn. Then you either use a J stroke or a pry, or change sides with the paddle.) With the added rocker, as the boat floats higher, more of each end is above the surface, catching the wind and giving a shorter waterline.

A lot depends on the shape of the bow and stern. A model or a hull design program might give you more information on how the boat would react with different loadings.

:I currently paddle a Wenonah Prism and have thought of taking the
: lines off it and making it a little narrower and have more tumblehome, but
: I don't know what I'd end up with (performance wise).

Hmm, genreally you need the tumblehome on a wider boat so you can dip the paddle in closer to the centerline. With a narrow boat tumblehome is not very important.

Consider the extremes: a canoe that 18 - 20 inches wide (like a kayak) would fit completely under my torso. The gunwales would be almost directly underneath my armpits. I would not have to lean over the edge of the boat to get my paddle practically straight up and down on either side of the boat. On the otherhand, with a guide canoe, with a 45 inch beam, if I was paddling from near the center I would need a longer paddle just to be able to reach the water, or, I would have to shift my weight greatly to one side.

With a round- or oval-bottomed boat this is certainly possible, but the geometry for hull design is rarely computed for boats that are paddled on their sides -- so who knows what kind of handling characteristics you would have.

However, if you like the lines of the boat you are paddling, both David Hazen and Gil Gilpatrick have info on how to take the lines off your existing boat. There are some nice ideas for doing that buried in the archives of this site, too.

Now, a trick: After you have the lines copied and your forms made, build the boat as you would normally do, but make the gunwale height about an inch lower in the center of the boat. the gunwale hieght at bow and stern can stay the same. A strip or straightedge, or taut string from the new center ehight to the boae will give you proper gunwale line of the forms.

Then, after you have built the boat, and glassed the outside, take it off the forms and put in a center thwart that is 2 to 3 inches shorter than the thwart on your current boat. The shorter thwart will pull in the middle, narrowing the beam by those 2 to 3 inches. It will also pullin the waterline width a little bit. You get a thinner boat The tension will induce additional tumblehome, too. Work around this thwart while you sand the inside.

If you remove the thwart when you glass the interior of the boat, replace it temporarily with a piece of 2x4 with appropriately spaced notches in it, that slips over the center area. After glassing the inside of the boat replace the center thwart, and then fit the additional thwarts fore and aft, and the seats, if you are using them instead of thwarts.

check amazon.com for info on Hazen's and Gilpatrick's books. You can buy them there, or take the info to your library or local bookstore. both books have plans for building canoes. Hazens plans are full size, Gilpatrick's are reduced scale and need to be enlarged (not a bit problem)

Ther are links on this bbs to places where you can download hulldesign programs. i think there is at least one free one.

Hope this helps

PGJ