Middle Path Boats

Middle Path Boats was established to serve the needs of discriminating, non-competitive boaters. Our primary aim is to provide our customers with beautiful, seaworthy, high-performance craft, each tailored to the users' specific set of requirements. While all boat designs are the result of compromise, we feel that compromise need not feel like sacrifice. High performance need not be achieved at the expense of seaworthiness. And ugliness needn't be the price of scientific design.

Experience has shown us that racing designs are often over-specialized and cranky, while "pleasure craft" tend to be uninspired performers. We have chosen the middle path, tempering high performance with civility and elegance. Each of our designs will richly reward skillful, competent handling without overtaxing the concentration of the average boater. We offer neither the fastest (though most of our boats are quite fast), lightest, nor least destructible boats; we simply offer the best balanced. Every Middle Path boat is a specific blend of the best historically proven elements of design and materials combined with the best and most practical products of modern thinking. With reasonable care, our boats can be joys forever. Examination and trial of any of our craft will convince any discerning boater that the main ingredient of all Middle Path Boats is common sense.

At exhibitions, people often compare our boats to the exquisitely crafted boats of J. Henry Rushton, Fletcher Joyner and Xavier Colon which are so beautifully displayed in the Adirondack, Thousand Islands and Mystic Seaport Museums. We take these comparisons to the old time masters as high praise, for like them, we strive to produce craft of great beauty and superior function. The comparisons end there. Technological advances in adhesives and sheathing resins and fabrics have made it possible for modern builders to produce craft that are superior to the classics in every measurable way. Judged on the criteria of performance, speed, weight, strength, maintenance requirements and durability, Middle Path Boats' wood/epoxy composite craft can more than hold their own against the plastic competition. Judged on the basis of aesthetics, there is no competition.

Though we take considerable pride in our craftsmanship, our main reason for entering the boat business was to produce cruising designs that perform at a higher level than any previously offered. Assuming sound construction, design is the major factor that determines whether boat owners will grow to love or hate their craft. Whether you're into rowing or into paddling, you'll find yourself doing it better and enjoying it more in a Middle Path boat.

From the mid 1970's through the early 1990's, we built only in wood/epoxy composite which made our boats limited production items. This meant that not everyone could have the opportunity to share the Middle Path experience. So we decided to offer exquisitely appointed hulls built primarily of fiberglass. This had the added benefit of making the experience more affordable.

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In 2007, after more than three decades of building woodstrip boats and canoes, the builders at Middle Path Boats have decided to discontinue offering wood/epoxy composite boats on a regular basis. Though our wood-based boats will always be special to us, we've decided that in the future we'd like to shift focus from our woodworking skills and place a greater emphasis on our many groundbreaking designs. We'd like to take this opportunity to share some of our favorites with you. If you missed your chance to have one of these designs built in wood/epoxy composite, it's possible that you'll see some of these models presented innovatively in other, more affordable, materials.