Pondraider won\\\'t sell many. CreekCrawler is my suggestion. I fancy one with the Mirage drive too, but I think you have to buy a whole Hobie kayak to get a Mirage drive. They don\\\'t ssell them for use on rival canoes, to the best of my knowledge

You can buy just the flapper unit for the Hobie on its own, if you want.  It is not cheap, but it is a neat, self-contained, unit that is reasonably easy to fit.  Tim O\\\'Connor has one fitted to his stitch-and-glue canoe, so I can probably ask him where he bought it (I have a feeling it\\\'s sold as a spare component for the Hobie boats).

It works well, but isn\\\'t terrifically efficient and doesn\\\'t allow you to go astern.  The good features are that the flappers fold up virtually flush with the hull underside and they will work with just a small depth of water by reducing the pedal stroke.  You still definitely need a paddle, as the flappers don\\\'t give a lot of manoeuvring capability.

If it were me, then I\\\'d look at something like the Seacycle unit (http://www.sea-cycle.com/index.php/accessories) or one of the other twisted chain pedal drive units instead (or make your own, not too hard using bike cranks and some slim chain - 6mm pitch is ideal as the sprockets can be small and the chain twists easily).  The Seacycle unit fits down a wide centre board type slot, pedals like a bike and will go astern as easily as ahead.

I have just had a quick look on the web and discovered the drive unit for sale in the US, here: http://www.kayakfishingsupplies.com/servlet/the-995/Hobie-Mirage-Drive/Detail
and here: http://www.austinkayak.com/products/254/Hobie-Mirage-Drive-Standard.html

Not as expensive as I had thought, to be honest.

Not sure about going backwards by just turning the thing around, as I seem to remember that the pedals are offset a fair bit fore and aft, so turning the thing around would significantly change the leg length and mean moving the seat as well, I think.  I\\\'m also not sure that the pedals themselves rotate through 180 deg so the the footpads can face the other way.

Im really getting into this sailing canoe idea.
Quick and cheap to build, easy to transport on top of the car. What more could you ask?
Visions of pushing into the reed beds for a summer picnic, exploring barely navigable waterways, setting traps for Signal Crayfish and saving the indigenous wild life (Hmm... need a license for that one.) Even battling the mighty River Trent. In its upper reaches there is plenty of open water for a good sail (if you don’t mind tacking) and loads of backwaters for a bit of serious ditch crawling, fishing or even a quiet night away from the crowds. Loads of potential for small adventures.
Time for a Victorian boating revival. They had the Rob Roy canoe, we have the Swallowboats FenRaider!

I\\\'ve had a couple of older yachts that needed the antifoul removing - short of getting a man in to blast it with sand or grit, I found the most effective method to be scraping.

There are products like Dilunet for stripping antifoul. These are very caustic, but at least the biocide doesn\\\'t get airborne. I found that the stripper really only softened it, it still had to be scraped off, and so it doesn\\\'t save much if any work. It may give a better result since you should be able to use a softer scraper (wood) vs. the tungsten-bladed scraper you need otherwise. I used it on my 25-footer but didn\\\'t bother when I came to do the 32 a few years later.

You can get (tungsten) scapers with a vacuum attachment to catch most of the residue, but you still need mask, gloves, eye protection and overalls. On my boat scraping got most of the way there - on the majority of the (GRP) hull the bare plastic was exposed, but there were still streaks betweeen where we had scraped.

A tin of thinners (I used Blakes no 1) and a plentiful supply of rag can help.

The other thing I found invaluable for stripping a 32-footer was a team of friends to help, several scrapers and sets of protective gear!

The only easy way I know of for antifoul  removal is to get a man in to blast it, using abrasive grit. This might not be prohibitively expensive given the small wetted area of hull. However such treatments are not without risk to the gelcoat. The all leave the gelcoat roughened, ready to key in a fresh coat of antifoul, which is what you want on a yacht, but not necessarily on a trailer sailer.   To get back to a smooth finish you would then have to polish with wet or dry, potentially thinning the gelcoat too much, or paint over it.

For my own part I am planning to finish my BR17 in Copperbot or similar .

I suspect that most of the vinyl will come off next season, but there will be bits that fight back, giving you the same problems all over again.

Sadly I\\\'m no-where near launching. I\\\'m nearly ready to turn over to glass the bottom. (It takes much longer to get to this point on a BR than a Storm, because of the water ballast tank. Being away from home a lot isn\\\'t helping either!)
I plan to paint below the waterline with the boat upside-down, hence I am thinking about paint even at this stage.


Anthony

After being referred to several different government departments, I finally received official approval for occasional use of a copper coated boat in Snowdonia National Park.  Apparently they use it on their own boats.  I was a bit concerned that I was going to single handedly wipe out the Gwyniad, a sort of land-locked herring which is found in Lake Bala and nowhere else in the world.  Apart from cost (and amortised over many years even that is less important), it seems a bit of a no-brainer.