Cottage Cruiser Canoe

Product Description

The Cottage Cruiser is a mid-sized traditional-looking touring canoe from Bear Mountain Boats. This boat is a strong choice for intermediate paddlers looking for good performance across a range of conditions. It offers less stability than the more beginner-friendly models but provides enhanced speed and agility.

The Canadian Canoe Company just north of Toronto spearheaded this project in 1997. They love traditional boats but wanted a midsize hull with a little more capacity than the 15 footers.

This design borrows some of its heritage from the Prospector series but is graced with a little more tumblehome in the hull sides and less curvature in the sheer. We think this makes it an even better looking boat and it has a respectable carrying capacity for its size.

Don't let the cottage reference fool you: this boat is happy playing near the beach, on portages or on a two week canoe trip. It planks up beautifully and will make you look like a professional.

Ted Moores of Bear Mountain Boats is the author of Canoecraft, the standard reference book for wood-strip canoe building. The book is recommended to accompany the kit or plans. It is packed with tips and techniques and has inspired countless first-time canoe builders around the world.

Length

4.74 m (15′ 6½″)

Maximum beam

890 mm (35″)

Beam waterline

805 mm (31¾″)

Bow height

510 mm (20″)

Centre depth

345 mm (13½″)

Displacement

153 kg (337 lb)

Optimum capacity

68-204 kg (150-450 lb)

Draught

102 mm (4″)

Wetted surface

2.12 m² (22.85 sq ft)

Weight to immerse

132 lb/in

Prismatic coefficient

0.525

Weight

20-25 kg (45-55 lb)

Watch us build a Bear Mountain canoe in this one-minute overview video:

Kit

We manufacture our kits to the highest standard using European-grown Paulownia for the planking strips. Uniquely, the strips in our Bear Mountain Boats kits have not only a bead-and-cove profile but also a pre-cut finger joint at each end, making the neat joining of strips even easier for builders at home.

The kit includes:

• Plans
• Instructions booklet
• CNC-cut building forms
• Paulownia strips with bead-and-cove edges and finger joints on both ends
• Ash blanks for decks
• Ash stem strips
• Ash gunwales (inwales and outwales) with scarf joints machined for joining
• Ash thwart
• Cane seats
• Waterproof glue for the strips
• Epoxy resin and activator
• Dispensing pumps
• Digital scales
• Epoxy fillers
• Woven glass fabric on a roll
• Free technical support from a competent builder

Please note that the kit does not include the box beam strongback for mounting the building forms on. You can either use a straight length of suitable timber or order the box-beam strongback we supply.

What else do I need?

Strongback

This strongback is made up of CNC-cut MDF panels that fit together to form a strong and stiff box beam measuring 200 mm × 200 mm and long enough to build the boat.

Plans and Instructions (not required by kit purchasers)

The plans contain sufficient information to make it possible to build the boat from scratch rather than a kit. The plans are printed in colour and include scale plans and full size drawings for all the forms.