Last summer I bought a new canoe and managed to get out in her for several extended trips.  In the course of putting her through her paces an old issue came up around what to do with the painter.  The painter is one of the least sexy pieces of equipment in anyone’s canoeing kit but that doesn’t mean it isn’t important.  The painter is a tie off whether to a dock, at a campsite to keep your investment from blowing away in a gale, or to a tree while you do some scouting along a rugged shore.  It is a tow rope whether you need towing, somebody else does or to haul your canoe up a steep incline or cliff side.  Of course it is a critical piece of gear for lining white water.  The painter can sometimes be detached altogether for unexpected emergency use.  There are even some people (not me) who use their painter as a tie-down for transporting their canoe atop their vehicle.  In the past I’ve mostly tied my painter to the carry thwart behind the bow deck, coiled it up and let it dangle under the deck.  But that is a poor solution for a lot of reasons and even drilling holes in the fore deck for a bungee loop to store the coil doesn’t resolve a couple of key issues.  First, the carry thwart isn’t really meant to handle the force that might be placed on it when the painter is in use in some of the ways I’ve mentioned.  Though it has never happened to me, I have heard many stories of a carry thwart snapping or causing damage to the hull because of the force exerted on it by the painter.  The second problem with tying off to the carry thwart is that it is in the wrong place for lining or manoeuvring the canoe when it’s in the water but you’re not in the canoe.  In such a case, to be effective, the painter should be attached at the very front (and rear) of the canoe fairly close to the water line otherwise your efforts to pull it around can as easily lead to capsizing as not.

So I decided that I’d like to have my painter attached where it will be most effective.  There may be others of you who have had the same notion but were put off by the thought of drilling holes into your shiny new (or not so new) vessel.  It certainly put me off.  But then I found out about this product which is so clever that I thought I’d pass it on for your interest.  The product is called Tugeye and while I confess that I haven’t yet installed it, I’m told by others who have (and judging by the mounting instructions) that anyone who can use an electric drill can do this job in 20 minutes.  Here’s the link:   (You need to Login or Register