This spring my uncle gave me his beautiful old canoe, well, technically he gave it to his sister, my mother, though I have properly usurped it from my landlubber parents, and taken it down 250 miles of rivers this warm season. The canoe is older than me, a cherry red, 1978 Mad River Explorer with a Kevlar body and wood trim. My uncle didn’t use it much, so it was in pretty good shape. Unfortunately, I’ve put a few dings in it. Pound for pound, Kevlar is super strong, but in canoes it's used more for making lightweight crafts than battering rams that glance off any rock. The Kevlar itself is only as thick as a sturdy layer of canvas. It’s actually a fabric weave, made rigid by an epoxy coat, and in the case of the Redhorse, an additional gelcoat (the red part). I managed to chip the gelcoat away in three places and otherwise score the bottom with countless minor scratches. I went to NorthWest Canoe, a sweet shop in a warehouse in Saint Paul, and bought an epoxy repair kit. After laying on a thick coat of the goo, from a short distance Redhorse looks as good as new. Though, if you get close, the many bugs from my front yard that adhered to the epoxy while I was applying it appear in their new vocation, part of the hull. The photo shows the half-treated Redhorse.
