This Week in Small Craft: August 17th, 2026
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RMWBS has a wooden stand-up paddleboard class coming up September 4 to 7 in Grand Lake, Colorado. Students will build a Chesapeake Light Craft Kaholo 14-foot board over 3.5 days at the new Maker Space in Grand Lake. No woodworking experience required.
Tuition is $300, which is very reasonable for a long weekend of boatbuilding and probably cheaper than buying another sad plastic thing you’ll stop using by October. Students who want to go home with a finished board of their own can contact RMWBS for details. They also have tips for reasonable lodging in Grand Lake.
Register through the RMWBS website or email treasurer@rmwbs.org.
American Whitewater has the river-specific angle on the latest Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante reductions. The national headlines are about acreage, politics, public lands, grazing, mining, sacred sites, and monument boundaries. For boaters, the question is simpler. What happens to the river corridors?
Chesapeake Light Craft has wooden oar plans for the person who looks at a perfectly good pair of oars and thinks, “I could make that more complicated.” IN a good way! CLC’s plans and template kits cover traditional wooden oars from 6 feet to 9 feet, 6 inches. They are aimed at fixed-seat boats, from small dinghies to pulling boats. The kit gets into full-sized patterns, shaping, blade work, shafts, hand tools.
Call for Nominations to the American Whitewater Board of Directors. AW directors serve three-year terms, attend three board meetings a year, and help with governance, strategy, fundraising, oversight, and the long, unglamorous work of keeping river advocacy alive.
The Bolton Landing No-Octane Regatta is set for Saturday, September 26, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Lake George at Rogers Park in Bolton Landing. It is free to attend and participate, with donations appreciated. The event is built around period boats powered by oar, paddle, and sail. No motors. No fumes. Just small boats, demonstrations, races, exhibitions, and people messing about on Lake George at the proper speed.
Paddling Life has a first look at the Game-Changer from Good Cats Kayaks, a strange little hybrid between a whitewater hardshell and a packraft. The idea is a hardshell bottom where you need performance, an inflatable upper where you want weight savings, and a design that can break down and convert into a backpack.
Down River Equipment has a Grand Canyon reflection called “The Grand Canyon Keeps Calling You Back.” It is not really a gear piece. It is about the first trip down the Colorado through the Canyon, the unease before launch, wind that can shove loaded 18-foot rafts upstream, a flipped motor rig, a helicopter rescue, and the daily camp work that makes a multi-day river trip function. Also, groover duty. Which, honestly, may be the clearest path to getting invited back.
Tumblehome Boatshop has two Thursday evening programs coming up in August.
On August 20, historian Hallie Bond presents “Excursion Steamboats of the Adirondacks.” The program looks at the steamboats that once served northeastern resorts, from the St. Lawrence to Lake George to the central Adirondacks. Most are gone. One of the great survivors is Tuscarora, the 75-foot steamboat on Blue Mountain Lake that lasted into the 21st century because she was hauled out and converted into a camp after her excursion days ended in 1929.
On August 27, Dr. David Borton presents “Solar Powered Birch Bark Canoes (!) and More.” Borton will talk about electric propulsion, solar-powered boats, and why marine travel may be inching toward electricity after centuries of muscle, sail, steam, diesel, and gasoline. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. Programs start at 7:15 p.m. The events are free, but space is limited and reservations are requested.
Please send an email - be sure to let them know which event you'll attend.