The "Linkanoe" The Canoe That You Can Take Apart

Earlier this week I was at a local auction and purchased this "Linkanoe."  I had never seen one before this and knew nothing about it so I was intrigued and bought it.

The assembled canoe as I nought it. The boot is on the canoe.

 A Linkanoe is assembled by laying out all 10 sections, with all the red star sections on one side, all the whites on the other. There is a number painted on the inside of the hull along the keel line: place all 4 ONEs adjacent to each other, etc. Then clamp the red/white bow section together, and continue until all 5 segments are lined up. Next, pull these segments together and clamp them. Position the center thwart into its spring-loaded bracket, and likewise, install the seats into their respective brackets, giving them a hand-slap to lock into place. Lastly, the two deck plates are slid as far forward into the points as possible, and the eyebolt in the center is rotated so that the tang on the bottom of the bolt securely locks into the underside of the gunwale.

All the pieces. The 'boot" is rolled up on the left of the photo

Match up the numbers and attach the clamps

One side assembled

The canvas ‘boot’ is held onto the hull by stretching rubber rope over aluminum ‘furls’ that are screwed into the gunwale. The original canvas boots were made by the Eureka Tent Co. of Binghamton, NY, and were olive drab in color.


 

Both halves assembled, ready to join together

The completed Linkanoe without the Boot attached.

At the end of World War 2, Ed Link was searching for a way to keep his factories going and his employees working. He was a pilot and the inventor of the flight trainer, with the homebase of Link Aviation Devices in Binghamton, NY.  He owned a Grumman Widgeon floatplane and also enjoyed hunting and fishing. He had invented a sectional canoe that could be carried in the tail of his airplane so that after landing on a remote lake in Quebec, he could assemble the Linkanoe on the top of the wing, then paddle off to fish, or to a nearby cabin. So in 1945 he kept the branch factory at Gananoque, Ontario, busy by building these sectional canoes and square stern boats utilizing the same equipment and materials which had been used in building flight trainers