I think I've had my kevlar 1988 Lady Bug for about 8 years. I bought it from the 1st owner's widower and the boat had never been in the water. 32 lbs with an aluminum Wenonah sliding foot brace installed. I replaced the stock seat with a contour cane seat from Ed's Canoe. It's got white gel coat and ash gunwales & thwarts.
These Curtis canoes have my favorite shape of float tanks - flat on top so the blade of the spare paddle can rest on it with the handle on the front thwart. This makes that space usable, rather than wasted, as with curved tanks. No deck plates, so no water can get trapped and rot the ends of the gunwales.
I'm 5'6" and 160 lbs and have owned and sold Sawyers Loon, Summersong and the 13'4" solo, kevlar Bell Wildfire, Carbonlite 2000 Mad River Slipper, kevlar Ultralight Wenonah's Voyager, Advantage and Whisper and still own Bell's black gold & white gold Flashfires, royalex and black gold Yellowstone Solos, black gold Merlin II, kevlar Bucktail and kevl
ar ultra light Magic, Mad River Monarch, Grumman G-129 Solo and royalex Wenonah Sandpiper and the Curtis Lady Bug just may be my favorite of the bunch for both single blading and double blading - a great all purpose canoe, but I wouldn't use it for whitewater, since I don't have good whitewater skills.
I single blade it with ZRE Medium bent paddles of whichever length is appropriate for whether I'm sitting or kneeling or on a lake or on a river. I also use a ZRE Medium straight shaft with it. The Lady bug is a joy both sitting and kneeling the way I have it set up. Very efficient and maneuver's great heeled to the inside or outside of turns.
This little canoe screams with my 225cm Epic Relaxed Tour kayak paddle - my lap times on our local city pond are very similar to my faster sea kayaks. It's crazy to me how quick this boat is. It will easily keep pace with kayaks of similar length.
The 29" max beam width and 26" gunwale width make this canoe a good size for smaller to medium size paddlers with moderate loads or simply paddling for the joy of it without any load. The relatively low shear of 16.5" bow and 15" stern help reduce the effects of wind on the boat. The 1-3/8" symmetrical rocker helps it track well when level and turn quickly when heeled over a bit. It's a pleasure on twisty streams & rivers.
If there's one thing I'd change about this Lady Bug, it would be to have the infused carbon/kevlar gunwales that are available on many of the modern high end canoes, rather than the wood gunwales, since I often leave a canoe on my car for weeks at a time, whether it be rain or shine and don't like maintaining the wood gunwales.
The Lady Bug has been out of production for several years, but the manufacturer's write up and specs can be found in the "Photo Album" at the Hemlock Canoe website. The current production solo canoe that the Lady Bug is likely most similar to is the Flashfire, which was originally produced by Bell, then Placid and now by Colden Canoe. Colden also possesses the mold for the Lady Bug, but hasn't made any, yet.
I hope this review was helpful. There isn't much information available about this canoe, so I thought I'd contribute a little.
