: 25 pounds is gigantic! Here's a take-a-part that claims 10 lb. Of
: course the pictures show it in water that about as rough as a
: farm pond. I'll bet it would be an adrenalin ride out there in
: the Pacific.
: http://www.duckworksmagazine.com/09/designs/alice/index.htm

: Seriously, there have been several builds of ultralite SOFs and
: their evaluations are provisional till they have been in use a
: while. The last place to test one is out in Hawaiian waters
: unless you are close enough to shore to catch a throw bag.

I will second this. I have a 15lb SOF canoe. It works great... within its rather specific design envelope. I will and have used it in 2-3' white caps and 50+ kilometer an hour winds. It held up just fine. I still wore a dry-suit and figured I could end up swimming at a moments notice. To get the structure that light I had to remove most of the redundancy from the frame, its strong enough, but there isn't a whole heck of a lot of reserve if something weird happens. I also made a decision to build it as an open topped canoe in case it suddenly decides that it wants to be a folder, I didn't want to be trapped in it.