Rant: Dear PaddlingLight, You Suck!

Dear PaddlingLight,

This site is a joke, NOTHING is free, and the designer cannot show a completed boat, not one single boat! This is the weakest “bait and switch” I have ever come across!

Sincerely,
Exploration Dude that Wants Everything for Nothing

I get tired of unconstructive comments like your comment on this. It’s funny to me that you actually thought it was going to get posted without become a rant, especially since it has been a long time since my last rant. Well, here it is. I posted it, Mr. Exploration.

You can download for free the drawings of every historic kayak or canoe on the website. FOR FREE! The boats I designed are the Siskiwit Bay, the Siskiwit LV, and the Siskiwit family. They look like picture below, because that’s the Siskiwit Bay that I built.

The rest, as stated in the descriptions, are historic canoes and kayaks over 100 years old that come from Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of North America. For example, this screenshot of a description from a free canoe plan:

On each of the historic canoe and kayak pages, it says exactly where they come from. Of course, I never built them all, because it wasn’t my plan to build these historic 100+ year old boats. Although I did build one that I slightly modified, and another that my wife loves named The Iggy.

The Free Canoe and Kayak Plan Project was a project to digitize these old boats, so people could see them represented in modern views and build them if they like. I spent months digitizing those designs into 3D models so that people like you could avoid having to do the work on your own.

If you are into building, you can just happily download a drawing from a link, such as this one: https://www.paddlinglight.com/product/modern-malecite-st-john-river-canoe/ or you can see the list here: https://www.paddlinglight.com/kayak-and-canoe-plans/. And I mean, happily. If you aren’t happy, just go away. Go far away until you discover happiness.

Now, please, excuse me while I go do something useful.

Sincerely,

THE ‘weakest “bait and switch”‘er EVER!

p.s. hahahahaha! It gets better. This is almost, but not quite as good as Crackpot Kayak Guy. Maybe he will rise to The Audacity of Winning Bold Kayaking Arguments on the Internet. This is literally over the free plans that he can literally download for free.

But Mr. Exploration sees “nothing is free.”

p.p.s this is my email to him:

But, seriously and all joking aside, do you not understand how to download the free plans? 
You go here: https://www.paddlinglight.com/kayak-and-canoe-plans/

Then you find the boat that you are interested in. You click on it. Read about it to make sure you are still interested. These are historic canoes and kayaks that are over 100 years old. If you are interested, there’s a link to the online store where you can select “Free Study Plans.” Then you can get them for free. 

Also, did you not see all the building logs on the website? https://www.paddlinglight.com/article-list/