Choosing the right boat

At Nova Craft Canoe, we offer a comprehensive range of traditional Canadian open canoe designs manufactured to industry leading quality standards using the latest materials and techniques.

Whether you are looking for the ideal canoe for family days out, tandem excursions, white water trips or just paddling around the lake, selecting the best one for your lifestyle is an important decision. After all, we build them to last a very long time.

The majority of Nova Craft models are based on the revered Chestnut Canoe Company designs which shaped the history of canoeing. Nova Craft canoes remain faithful to the originals with enhancements to ensure you gain the maximum enjoyment from your canoeing experiences.

  • Novacraft

Materials

 

ABS

Royalex (expedition grade) and Royalex Lite (Royalex industry standards), are ABS plastic laminates with a core of expanded closed cell foam. We custom order our Royalex sheets for each model for extra hull strength and stiffness while keeping the weight down. These canoes are great for shallow rivers and white water and stand up under the most rugged conditions. The major advantage to ABS canoes is their survivability in situations where an accident might leave a less robust canoe unusable. When you’re on a remote wilderness trip and you need to rely on your boat to bring you back, ABS is still the most popular choice.

 

SP3

Our rotationally moulded three layer polyethylene construction features an extremely durable outer layer of Superlinear polyethylene to take the knocks of everyday life; a foam core to add stiffness and an inner polyethylene layer to add further durability and stiffness.

Nova Craft’s SP3 canoes are ideal for families and rental companies who are looking for reliable durability at a lower price than our lighter weight Royalex and laminate canoes.

 

 


 

Laminates

Laminates are a great choice for river, lake or pond. In addition to their strength and light weight, they glide smoother and faster on the water.

Our unique, high-tech Infusion System, adapted from the aerospace industry, offers distinct advantages over traditional boat building systems:

  1. Eliminates human error
  2. Drastically reduces the number of blemishes and imperfections
  3. Dramatically improves production efficiency
  4. Produces stronger, higher quality laminates
  5. Reduces excess resin in the laminate
  6. Has far less gas emissions (a plus for the environment)
  7. And produces better, more consistent boats.

 

Today, Nova Craft Canoe is the only boat builder using this unique process on every laminate canoe we make. It costs us more to produce canoes this way but the quality speaks for itself. The bottom line: You get a superior, stronger lightweight canoe, made to exacting standards while we protect the environment.

 

Kevlar

These hulls are infused with high impact vinyl ester resin, sandwiched with fibreglass cloth between an outer layer of Cap (Chemically Activated Polyester) cloth and an inner layer of Kevlar.

Kevlar/Spectra

We combine Kevlar and Spectra with a high impact-resistant vinyl ester resin in these infused hulls for expedition quality, lightweight canoes that resist tearing and punctures far better than an all Kevlar canoe.

Blue Steel

Nova Craft’s exclusive BLUE STEEL is an advanced Kevlar Carbon material combined with Spectra and applied through a unique infusion process. The result is a tough, rigid canoe that’s surprisingly light and easy to handle. The ideal lightweight option for expedition adventure.

 

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