For our 40th anniversary in 2012, Kadir and I bought each other boats we could easily lift: Hornbeck’s fourteen-foot New Trick. These were the latest of Pete Hornbeck’s ultralight pack canoes, light enough to carry across trails between glistening glacial lakes in the Adirondacks. Crafted of a mix of Kevlar and carbon fiber, New Tricks are spare, slim, and canoe-like, paddled solo with a double blade, and weighing just under 25 pounds. The last few ounces were Hornbeck’s concession to beauty over lightness: the decks and gunnels—top rails—are rich cherry wood.
Kadir bought the second New Trick Pete’s crew made in October 2012. He asked for an extra layer of carbon fiber so he could muck over logs and beaver dams. Paddling was a pleasure, but the cherry gunnels needed care, and Kadir didn’t oil his gunnels. Until I propped it on logs, he stored his boat with gunnels and decks resting directly on the damp earth for weeks at a time until paddling season.
When I remembered, I oiled the gunnels on his boat, then my boat, purchased six months later. The cherry rails gleamed. Eventually, we moved to western North Carolina, where the lakes are manmade, and Alzheimer’s gradually took Kadir’s mind and body. Kadir was unable to paddle, and there was little time for paddling for me. Our boats rested on racks until Kadir died in 2023.
The first time I paddled after his passing, it was annoyingly windy on Lake Julian. Rollers marched toward me in steady formation—paddling conditions Kadir loved, and I hate. Gritting my teeth, I aimed my Hornbeck’s bow into the wind and knuckled down for my crossing. “It’s just one damn wave after another,” I observed. I was talking about grief as well as water.
Cherry wood looks warm and lovely when cared for, and I oiled the gunnels of both boats each spring, eventually using the last drop of the aromatic tung oil mixture Pete Hornbeck gave us when we purchased our boats. But Kadir’s gunnels were separating from the rotting decks at his bow and stern. No one paddled the boat, so I needn’t have worried about it, but it bothered me. We’d paddled these beautiful crafts miles together in the Adirondacks. They’re full of memories.
I called Hornbeck Boats. Pete Hornbeck had died in 2020, so I told Josh and Andy about Kadir’s boat. “Sand the decks. Try longer screws. Hand tighten everything,” they suggested. I did. It worked. Andy added, “Oiling can do wonders.”
Rooting around in Kadir’s many crates of art supplies, I dug out a can of tung oil. I found an old t-shirt of Kadir’s and cut a square from the soft, purple sleeve. Dip. Wipe. Dip. Wipe. “I’m oiling a dead man’s boat,” I chuckled to no one.
There is something satisfying about how good Kadir’s boat looks. And yes, purists spell the top rail of a boat “gunwale,” but Kadir would have spelled it gunnel. It makes more sense.
-Susan Gelber Cannon, July 2024
