The last time an Adirondack Guide Boat was in Rhode Island it appeared at a fine furniture show; this week, it returns for the Providence Boat Show, today through Sunday in the Rhode Island Convention Center and the Dunkin' Donuts Center.
During the show, one of the craftsmen from the Vermont company that makes the Adirondack Guide Boat will build a cedar boat on the spot.
"They're like floating furniture," said David Rosen, one of the owners of the company based in Charlotte, Vt. "They're very eye-catching."
So eye-catching is the boat that the September issue of Vogue magazine ran a story about the design by Rosen's partner, Steve Kaulback, and some of his discerning customers.
"Katie Ford, the president of the Ford Modeling Agency, knows beauty when she sees it," wrote Robert Sullivan. "She owns one of Steve's 12-foot boats. Tom Peters, author of In Search of Excellence, has two of Steve's boats; and John Cheffins, the president of Rolls-Royce, owns one of Steve's top-of-the-line cedar Adirondack Guide Boats."
The first double-ended guide boats appeared in the Adirondacks in the 1830s when sports from New York City would travel to the vast mountain range to go fishing and hunting. A guide needed a boat that was stable with enough capacity to hold himself, a sport or two, and supplies. But the boat also had to be light enough for the guide to carry overland from one alpine pond to the next.
The Adirondack guide boat was born.
"It's a mystery design," said Rosen, "It looks somewhat like a canoe, but it also looks like a British boatwright got lost in the woods and he came up with the design."
The original boats were so thin and lightweight, they were called "egg shells." Today, a 15-foot cedar model weighs 75 pounds, only five pounds heavier than a comparable Kevlar model. Kaulback, who once taught at Brooklyn's Pratt Institute, has modified the original design to enhance its beauty and performance.
At first glance, an Adirondack Guide Boat bears some resemblance to a canoe because it is double-ended, but that's where the similarity ends.
"If you've got a hard wind, you don't want to be out on a large lake in a canoe," Kaulback writes. "In 1998, in a 90-mile race across the Adirondacks, 81 canoes and kayaks were blown to the side of Racquette Lake by a hard wind. Thirty-four of the canoes and kayaks were flipped by the waves and all had to be rescued and towed off the lake by boats with gasoline engines. No guide boats required that service. These boats were made for heavy water and hard wind, conditions common in the Adirondacks. If you made your livelihood from your boat, which is what the guides did, you'd better be able to get your sport safely back to shore, with gear and game intact.
"There are some situations in which a canoe will outperform a guide boat or a pack boat. Those conditions are when whitewater is present, when a canoe's directional instability becomes an asset, not a defect. To intentionally direct a canoe sideways is called 'ferrying.' In the proper context, ferrying is an invaluable tool. But that virtue becomes a defect when the boat is taken on water wider than a narrow mountain stream. And when the wind kicks up, which it always does, the canoe will go sideways. Guaranteed."
The guide boat is propelled by a rower seated close to the bottom of the boat. The center of gravity is inside the boat. In a canoe, the center of gravity is usually around the paddler's belly button, above the gunwales, making it less stable.
Long oars also contribute to the guide boat's stability and speed. In an informal race at Mystic Seaport in Connecticut, Rosen, rowing a guide boat, beat an inflatable dinghy with a 6-horsepower outboard.
The real attraction of the Adirondack Guide Boat, however, is its ability to turn heads. The cedar and spruce version, with touches of cherry and woven cane seats, looks as though it could have floated out of a Winslow Homer painting. (On the company's Web site, www.adirondack-guide-boat.com, there are also pictures of boats that have played prominent roles in weddings.) It is available in lengths ranging from 13 to 19 feet, from $11,600 to $14,000, and accounts for about 15 percent of the company's sales.
The wooden boat is also available as a kit for $3,200 to $4,150 depending on length, and customers have said that it takes about 300 hours to complete one. (Adirondack Guide Boat also offers boat-building classes at its facility in Vermont.)
The Kevlar versions, from $1,750 to $4,000, have the same lines as the wooden boats, and turn heads, too. In 10-, 12- and 15-foot models, they account for about 70 percent of the company's sales.
The nine employees of Adirondack Guide Boats build about 200 boats a year, and Rosen says he and Kaulback are dedicated to keeping everyone employed through the winter.
On his way to the Providence Boat Show this week, Rosen said "The boats are slightly discounted at this time of year because we cover the payroll."
