Splurge of the Moment: Bespoke Canoes by Designer Rollin Thurlow
The art of hand-crafted "floating sculptures" perfected.
Photo: Peter Marshall
PADDLE POWER Applauded as “nothing less than floating sculpture” by backcountry experts, the Atkinson Traveler takes its inspiration from canoes of an era when wilderness guides “depended on them for their livelihood and very survival,” says its designer, Rollin Thurlow, who literally wrote the book on the subject as co-author of The Wood & Canvas Canoe.
Based in the tiny Maine village of Atkinson, his Northwoods Canoe Company painstakingly hand-fashions its crafts from Maine white cedar, white spruce, ash and best-quality canvas, finishing with colorful marine enamel (check his website’s Canoe Cam to see boatbuilding in action). His extra-deep Traveler model, shown, was specially designed to weather the 2015 retracing of a historic 1905 canoe journey, later chronicled in the documentary “Labrador Passage.”
Currently waitlisted to 28 months, Thurlow’s bespoke watercraft are our pick for mountain homeowners who want to paddle their own canoe. 17.5’ Atkinson Deep Traveler, $5,400; wooden-canoes.com.
