azalea wrote on Apr 24^th, 2010 at 7:35pm:

I have only played around with paddling a canoe solo and then only in boats not designed to be specifically solo.  So I am not expert, but I have to believe if you take a solo canoe, you are increasing significantly your chances of becoming wind-bound, since the amount of wind needed to ground an inexperienced soloist is far less than what you would get with a double/triple canoe combination.

I did not find this to be true on my solo trip last year (first time ever in a solo canoe).  I mean, if I'd gotten into a nasty headwind on the first day, this might have been true, but a couple hours into my trip I felt very comfortable that I could handle headwinds.  Didn't get into any serious headwinds until Day 5 and they didn't slow me down any worse than they would have slowed a tandem.

Part of the deal with a solo is you have a much better length-to width ratio as a true solo is much narrower than a tandem yet it's nearly as long.  This is a much more efficent hull shape that helps enormously in making up for the fact that you have only 50% of the paddle power of a tandem crew.  

I'm no physicist so I can't give you exact figures, nor was I in the neighborhood of any tandems to measure myself against them, but I would estimate conservatively that I had at least 85-90% of the efficiency in my solo that I normally enjoy in a tandem.  I bucked a strong headwind and plenty of rain from Suz all the way down to Kett in less than a full day of paddling and I'm a pretty average-sized guy with average paddle power using a single-bladed stick.