Hi,
When we bought our house, it came with an Old Town canoe in the backyard.
We were told by our then tenants that it was owned by a previous tenant and
he was planning to come back for it. It's been 4.5 years and it's still
here and we've occasionally taken it out for small jaunts on the local
waterways (we're in the Finger Lakes region of NY). Last winter during a
wind storm, it was lifted up and whacked against a spruce tree which cracked
it midway on the left side, from the top of the gunwale to about 12-16." No
pieces of the hull are missing, though the plastic covering the top of the
gunwale wall is broken and missing sections.

We are pondering on whether it's worth repairing and how hard it would be to
fix it. We are not sure what kind of material it's made of. I went on Old
Town website but couldn't match it up to any of the current models (no
surprise). It's serial number is gone and so is any other name, except for
the "Old Town" label on the sides. Looking at the cross section of the
break, it looks like a layer of plastic, a layer of stiff foam and another
layer of plastic. This canoe is light blue on the outside, beige/putty
colored on the inside. It's pretty generic in shape and style. While we are
fixing it, we would also want to replace the plastic that covers up the top
of the gunwale walls.

We already have a different canoe that my husband & son use for fishing (an
aluminum square back Sports Pal). The Sports Pal is a nice canoe x boat
(it's sort of a hybrid) but since it's aluminum we're hesitant to take it in
rocky situations. The thought is that if we fix the Old Town for a
reasonable price, it could be used for times when we might liked to go down
a local creek.

So is an old Old Town canoe worth fixing? Is there a point where a crack is
too severe to be safely fixed? Any idea of what kind of Old Town canoe it is
in terms of materials? My digital camera charger is MIA but when I find it
I can put up some photos if that would help. And if we do fix it, would it
be ethical to claim it as our own? And if we decide it's too difficult for
us to fix, should we scrap it or donate it? And if we donated it - who to?
Are their any liability issues with donating a cracked canoe?

Chris in lovely Ithaca NY