17' Standard

we bought this back in 2003 used for my son. Had a tear in the hull. Patched it and we still take it on the river for relaxing paddles.

It was easy to stand up underway (good secondary stability) to rest the old bones and to scout the rapids near Shubuta. This upper stretch has thousands of stumps, strainers, and deadfall in the water, and there was no difficulty in maneuvering the Osagian. A little downstream of Waynesboro the river became wider and much clearer of obstacles and I took my seat in the EZ-ROW and began forward rowing. Big bow wave all day long with relatively little effort.
I loved every minute in my new Osagian.

My suggestion is to steer clear of this one and get a real canoe, and if you really need to save money then get a royalex Mohawk Nova or Intrepid. Both cost less. The Nova is much faster and the Intrepid is more stable. Both are more durable. And for the guy in the earlier review that said it was much too unstable, you might want to stay clear of canoes all together.

The weight on this tank is awful at 79lbs. so it doesn't get used much. But for going down creeks with lots of deadfall you can paddle right over most of it and not worry too much about punctures like I do when using my ultralight kevlar canoe. Being aluminum it's really tough and sitting on the ground upside down for several years hasn't hurt it a bit. An outfitter would love that part of it but it really is too darn heavy and tippy for my tastes. It was cheap at $350 and in new condition so I'm not complaining about that part a bit but there are better canoes out there although you might have to pay more for them, naturally. I think they have sponsoons available for them but I made an outrigger for it and that sovled the stability issue completely, you can't tip it over under normal conditions but then you have the hassle of transporting the outrigger with you and putting it on and taking it off later, also the outrigger does cause a little bit of drag. If I had waterfront property where I could leave it on all the time it wouldn't be an issue. For what it is, it is an OK canoe and it fit my budget at the time but if you are thinking of buying one it really isn't a great canoe and for the same money you could find a used Grumman that would be more stable and lighter. Comparing this to my Grumman, to be fair, the Osage has a welded seam down the center and a big "shoe" to protect it so it probably will never leak there. I live about a mile from the ocean so there is some salt in the air all the time here so I noticed the anodizing on the Osage isn't as good as the Grumman and shows more micro pitting inside even though the Grumman is 30 yrs. old. It isn't a bad canoe, but it's not great either, just sort of in between I guess so I give it a 5, but I gotta say that of all the canoes that I have owned in the past and do currently own this is at the bottom of the list, but then again if you never owned anything better you might really like it.