My very first roadtrip of 2008 is the one to Oakhurst, California. Some 40 miles from Yosemite, Oakhurst is the home of Tiger Canoe and is our destination on this cold and rainy Saturday. Just the day before, one of the biggest storms to hit California in recent memory passed through and wreaked havoc in the Bay Area. Not the best prelude for a trip to pick up your BRAND NEW OC-1! =)

Surprisingly, the trip went smooth. Tiger was the coolest guy...very down to earth and a talented craftsman/artisan. Virgil didn't know how the canoe would come out looking because he hadn't seen any pictures of the canoe...he'd only traded emails and phone calls with Tiger on how he wanted the design of the canoe to look. When we got there and Tiger flipped on the lights...there it sat...it was so damn pretty! The lines, coloring, and the fading paint scheme...all made it look like the canoe was moving even while it sat on the stands! We spent at least an hour chatting with Tiger about the canoe, his business, how the canoes are made...and how an OC-1 workshop ended up in the middle of the woods, nowhere near the ocean! Tiger also showed us some custom stand-up paddling boards he was developing for a client and explained how the development process is still old-school: He builds one, they beat it to hell, he builds another, they beat it to hell again. This process occurs over and over again with Tiger making refinements to each successive model.

One of the most interesting points that I came to learn was the process by which Tiger "colors" his canoes. You might think that he paints them by airbrush or some other method AFTER the canoe comes out of the mold. You'd be wrong. He actually colors the inside of the mold BEFORE he lays down the carbon fiber/resin! So the colors and design scheme have to be decided upon early in the process and without benefit of seeing the finished and fully constructed lines of the canoe. It also means that the design is "baked" into the canoe as it's being constructed. Amazing!

The trip was awesome if only to see Virgil's canoe all shiny and brand new. But meeting Tiger and learning, in more detail, the entire process of building these high performance watercraft gave me a renewed appreciation for the boats that we paddle. Now made with space-age materials that are lightweight and stronger than any traditional wood canoe, there's no replacement for the time-tested knowledge, skill and artistry that go into the construction of OC's. They've been made by hand for thousands of years and that's still the case. The painstaking attention to detail, the eye for colors/design, the knowledge of the materials and the process...Tiger is a true artisan.