Boat of choice

While we’ve enjoyed the stripper, the need for something more suited for expedition paddling was obvious. Then I learned about Verlen Kruger, who has to be one of the most interesting people I’ve heard about. You can check out http://www.krugercanoes.com/ to see his boats, but be sure to read the “Meet Verlen Kruger” section while you’re there. Anyhow, he designed about forty solo decked expedition canoes while constantly trying to refine their performance characteristics. The SeaWind deep hull has to be one of his best expedition designs. Wanting to protect his design when he prepared to retire, Verlen passed on his work to his protégé, Mark Przedwojewski, who retained the Kruger Canoe brand. Scott Smith, who had built about a hundred boats with Verlen, wanted to incorporate some of his own refinements, and bought Sawyer Canoe. With Verlen’s encouragement and support, Scott created the Superior Expedition while also continuing the Sawyer line.http://www.superiorcanoes.com/solocanoes.html. We called Scott and placed an order for the Superior Expedition. They’re handcrafted one at a time, so we patiently wait for Ibi---well, maybe not all that patiently.

Scott had one he had done in purple, not a standard color, which was really snazzy, but we went with the yellow for visibility and safety on the water. Scott goes out of his way to personalize and customize each boat to the owner’s needs. When Ibi arrives, we’ll change the header picture.  For now, this is one of Scott's pictures.