Touring Canoes
Touring Canoes & Tripping Canoes
A touring canoe, or tripping canoe, is a canoe designed for longer distance trips than a basic rec canoe. While shorter canoes can also serve as touring boats, the traditional touring canoe length typically ranges 16 ft to 19 ft. When choosing a touring canoe, you need to start with things like the distance and duration you plan to paddle, as well as how many paddlers (dogs included) and amount of gear you'll need.
Adjust your search below with your desired length or weight to find a touring canoe for you!
Guide to Buying a Touring Canoe
Relative to a recreational canoe, a touring canoe is going to be longer, skinnier, and faster. As any experienced canoeist will tell you, all features of a canoe make a difference and have trade-offs. The longer, skinnier frame of a touring canoe will track straighter, faster, and with an improved secondary stability. But if you're getting into a touring canoe for the first time, you'll notice that it gives up some of the primary stability that a wider rec canoe possesses. Other specs to a touring canoe or tripping canoe that you want to understand are the hull shape, amount of rocker, and weight. Hull shape and rocker will give indication of how it will track, turn, and respond to the chops of the water. The weight is always critical as you can easily find yourself with a canoe that's too heavy for one person to lift alone.
Just be sure to read through the touring canoe reviews and you'll see how others before you have experienced and enjoyed each model, each for different reasons and different experience levels. And when you're done, be sure to share your review with the rest of us!