"Frazer in his Hou 14"

Flood Rescue Canoeing Hero!

"Press the button and wait for the green man?"

"The Tweet from North Yoks Police"

Frazer was spotted on Police CCTV and they tweeted a picture of him so we got in touch with him to find out his story, and this is his amazing tale…….

What an eventful December!

I was at home when I got a notification on my phone, telling me that certain areas of the country have been issued a red weather warning for flooding. So I thought about the idea of taking my Hou Canoe to the flooded areas to help rescue people, as I’m a qualified community first responder with LIVES (Lincolnshire Integrated Voluntary Emergency Service).

"Night paddling"

The next day I drove to York, I’ve never seen it flood as bad as it had. Once I found an ideal location to launch my canoe, I got kitted up and set out to see if I could find anyone to help.

The first person I helped was a gentleman who was stranded by a shop, he required being taken from one side of the flooded area, over to his house. Then as I was paddling past a house a gentleman shouted me over. He informed me that he didn’t have any food at his house, so I took him from his house, over to a part of the city that still had shops open. Once he had got a few essentials, I took him back to his house. At one point I even had a dog in my canoe!

A lady shouted me over to her house, she informed me that her daughters dog needed to be taken for a walk, as it was unable to go to the toilet in the house. That was the first time that I had ever had an animal in my canoe. It felt surreal paddling down roads, next to cars with only their roof showing. You couldn’t see where the river was, because the water was higher than the barriers/ fencing. In total that day I’d say I helped about 15 people.

I have kept in contact with one gentleman I helped called Nick. He required being transported from his apartment so that he could reach his cherished motorbike, before the flood water engulfed it.

I’ve taken my canoe on many adventures, but this one will be hard to beat, as it’s not very often, that you can paddle around a major city’s streets!

Thanks to all the people at Hou Canoes, for making such a versatile canoe!
Frazer Grainger

Check out Frazers video of his adventure on YouTube,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHawAF04umg

Hou Canoes; Crash Test Program.

Well sitting here in the office on a soggy Tuesday we have decided to add a Crash Test Program to what we offer. Why?

Hou put that there?? 

Well, from time to time, as you will know we all have the odd moment where sanity unwittingly leaves our minds and the result is that you have crashed your boat. This could be folding it round a rock on a particularly lumpy bit of river, it could be dropping it off the roof of the car because you thought you had a hold of it but the evidence is against you!

At times we have all done it, or better still, witnessed some one else do it! My particular favorite was a friend with a brand new Land Rover Discovery, it had the roof rails that ran from front to back. They ran up hill though due to the step in the roof on the Mk1 Discovery. Sadly he had not noticed this was a potential issue. The canoe was loaded and then he went to get the straps, only to see from a distance his boat perform an upside down seal launch off the front end of the roof rack and head straight for the tarmac making a large dent in the car bonnet on is way down. I am still unsure if the un named culprit was more concerned about his bonnet (which was a right off) or the fact his end deck had split in two, and the hull of his boat was damaged underneath that!

So for these 'unexpected moments' we would like to offer our Hou Canoes Crash Test Program. Simply put, if you crash your boat then drop us a line, tell us what happened, send us some pics and we will contact you directly to help sort it out at a preferential rate.

Hou Canoes,

The caring canoe company……………

What’s the story??

New material released by Hou Canoes……

Now that you can’t make Royalex canoes anymore, have we reached a canoe apocalypse?? What will people buy if there is no Royalex?? The end is nigh!!! Or maybe not! Read on to see how we have saved the day at Hou!

As a canoe manufacturer Hou was well aware that this situation was in bound, we thought, ‘best crack on and see what could be done’, so here is the story.

The starting point;

Royalex was lighter than traditional plastics and three layer plastics, it was fairly tough too, and if the worst came to the worst you could repair it with resins, almost anywhere. The only down side was it wasn’t quite as stiff as we would have liked in a perfect world.

What exactly do we want?;

So we want a material that is stiff, lightweight, tough, wear resistant and simply repairable if needed. Oh, and it mustn’t cost the earth!! Not much of a tall order then!? Well that’s the brief, lets go find it.

Boffins;

It was just after this point that I got lost to a world of very very techy people who wear white coats and talk in languages that paddlers don’t understand! Yes, there are people out there that fit certain stereotypes, but what I have learnt is that they are very very very clever! So after countless months of testing, mixed with many months of explaining the real world to the men in white coats who don’t understand the real world, we began to formulate what the experts say is the most up to date, highly developed three-layer material ever used in the production of canoes.

The material we were using in its original form had the right properties, but each property simply needed to be improved to attempt to replace Royalex, a simple job then!!??

Result;

What we have now achieved is a significant weight reduction, increased wear properties, increased stiffness and still maintained the ability to repair a boat on the river bank with nothing more than a blow torch and a knife. But how??

Without going completely into ‘white coat speak’ it works kind of like this. Looking at your boat material down to an Atomic level (yes the white coat men can do this), what we needed was a highly tunable ability to affect the stiffness, wear property and weight of the material whilst it is being Rotary molded, this works down at a Nano level giving us the ability to control the characteristics of the material while it is actually in production. Equally as important is the ability to dial back these adjustments if required, so the Inversion ability was also added to the mix.

The story of how we got here is important, its what makes your Hou Canoe as good as it is, the key elements of this new material development are highlighted in bold above, the project code name was born early from these attributes and has stayed with us all the way through, so that’s the name we have given to our new material,

Atomic

Rotary

Nano

Inversion

…….for three layer molding.

Or for short we call it A.R.N.I.3.

Why?

Because nothing and now one is harder than ARNI3!!

We are very proud of our ARNI3, its been an emotional journey, what is even more impressive is that we are still able to produce these boats and not charge a premium for them, ARNI3 is always there for you, as standard.

“Probably the toughest, lightest, stiffest and hardest wearing 3 layer available.”

Thanks for reading,

The Hou Crew.

What a summer!!??

Well, cant believe that it was March when we last blogged! So what have we been up to?

The summer season exploded on us with an ever higher demand for our canoes than we had imagined possible. (Which was nice!) It seems that there is a great swell of people wanting to get out on the water by canoe, and many of those people also appreciated a well designed, well made, British product. So firstly and most importantly, “Thank You” to all our customers! Please believe me when I say one of the biggest buzzes the Hou crew get is seeing a Hou Canoe on somebody else’s car or van, driving off to another adventure! It always makes us smile…

We had some great times with our friends @Glenmorelodge, especialy the Canoe Symposium, great times with our friends @windermerecanoe and not fogetably some awesome trips down the river Wye. Next year it has been suggested we have a ‘Hou on the Wye’ weekend. Give us a shout if you would be up for that!

Now the fantastic Autumn weather has broken we are hunkering down and making lists of all the things we want to achieve over the winter, ready for next season. So if you have any good ideas, just let us know and we will add them to the list!!

Thanks for reading, more again soon!!

The Hou Crew!

“Inside the deal”: Glenmore Lodge, Dave Rossetter and Hou Canoes.

So, enough of all the ‘Official Press Release’ and blah blah blah, whats it all about and why have we been shouting about it so much? Well, simple, it’s a big deal for us all!!

We know at Hou Canoes that we have great boats, the designs are tried and tested and the manufacturing process is the very latest and the very best in the industry. Also what we have up our sleeves for the next couple of years we know will take us to being the most desired canoe brand on the lake and river.

However to get that across to you folks, the paddlers, we simply needed added credibility and increased awareness. This is why Mercedes have an F1 team, its why Nike spend fortunes on Tiger Woods (Well they used to!) and so on. However at Hou Canoes we don’t have budgets like that, in fact nothing like that! So we needed to think a little outside the norm. In previous lives working with other brands (Hou’s names are now forgotten), we have learnt the value of a combo using Social Media and having some great paddlers along side you. So when the opportunity came along to speak with Dave Rossetter and Glenmore Lodge we did all we could to make it work, just like we always do!

So after several weeks of ironing out what everyone wanted we had the bones of an agreement, simple as that!! Dave as a very experienced paddler, leader and all round top bloke could see we had fire in our bellies and that we would be pushing all we could to make the best boats possible. Simply, that’s what Glenmore Lodge need, they have such a huge number of paddlers going through the centre both on courses and staying whilst paddling in Scotland that they need the best possible kit available, and that’s what we supply. Simple!

So, what’s the next stage?? Well we will be running competitions for FREE courses and accommodation at Glenmore Lodge and other such goodies. We will be launching a new Lodge Spec for all our boats where you will be able to have a boat fully fitted just like the pro spec that the Lodge guys use, but maybe more importantly we will be using the Lodge guys and their experience with developments of new boats, and new kit over the coming years. As well as making new product and skills videos and organizing paddling events. We are going to be busy!

So I hope having read this far you can see why we are all so excited to be in partnership with Glenmore Lodge! No doubt, more news soon,

Oh and one last thing, it's an absolutely AMAZING place, if you have never been, you are missing out!!

Take a look www.glenmorelodge.org.uk

HOU CANOES NAMED AS GLENMORE LODGE CANOE SPONSOR

HOU CANOES NAMED AS GLENMORE LODGE CANOE SPONSOR 

2ND FEBRUARY 2015: Glenmore Lodge is announcing today that Hou Canoes will be the official canoe sponsor of the Paddle Sport department, the new partnership will run from February 2015 – December 2017. 

Head of Paddle Sports at Glenmore Lodge, Dave Rossetter says: “I am delighted to announce that Hou Canoes are our new canoe partner. The brand represents excellent quality and they are manufacturing an first-rate range of open canoes. Using the latest technology and materials their boats offer exceptional durability and strength - which is perfect to meet with the requirements of the Glenmore Lodge canoe courses”. 

He continues: “Our stores are equipped with market leading equipment from a range of leading sponsors, having Hou Canoes on board will further reinforce that we have the highest quality kit for customers”. 

The new partnership will offer course participants the option to use the Hou range of canoes which include their three layer PE boats – Hou 13, 14, 15 and 16 models. Annually the boats will be replenished which presents course participants with continuous access to market leading boats. 

Glenmore Lodge instructional staff will have the opportunity to provide feedback on boat designs and features which will in turn influence future developments to the Hou Canoe range. The Hou series of boats arriving at Glenmore Lodge from March 2015 include: 

Hou 13

The Hou 13 is a lightweight solo canoe that also has the capacity to carry a small load. The shorter length and responsive handling  makes it one of the most fun canoes in the Hou range.  Hou14 The Hou 14 is an ideal canoe for solo or tandem paddling. It is the bigger brother to the Hou 13 and provides a faster straight line speed and a higher load capacity.  Hou 15 The Hou 15 is a great all-round canoe that is both efficient at paddling and load carrying. It is an ideal choice for weekend trips away.  Hou16 The Hou 16 is a fantastic all-round canoe with plenty of room for carrying all your gear for multi day adventures or for taking the kids out on family day trips.  General Manager of Hou Canoes, Justin Snell, says: ‘We are very happy to be working in partnership with Glenmore Lodge, we will be utilising the vast experience of the Lodge team to further improve all aspects of the brand as well as working to further promote both brands through the on-going program. Watch out for further Lodge related announcements very soon!".  Each year, Paddle Aport courses at Glenmore Lodge are growing in popularity and has seen the roll out of increasing numbers of skills and qualification courses.  To see the full range of 2015 Glenmore Lodge paddle sport courses visit www.glenmorelodge.org.uk and for further information on Hou Canoes visit www.houcanoes.com  For more information or to arrange ay interviews please contact Marketing and PR Manager, Lisa Anderson on 01479 861 256 or email lisa.anderson@glenmorelodge.org.uk  Notes to editors   Glenmore Lodge is Scotland's National Outdoor Training Centre and has an international reputation as a leader in the field of outdoor leadership training and assessment. They also offer a diverse programme of courses accessible to anyone wishing to learn the skills necessary to recreate safely in the outdoors.   Some of the UK's most experienced and highly qualified professionals provide coaching and instruction in rock and ice climbing, mountaineering, kayaking on river, sea and surf, open canoeing, mountain biking, orienteering and skiing.   The Lodge is based in the centre of the Cairngorms National Park - Britain's largest National Park.   The Lodge itself has a climbing wall, gym, kayak rolling pool, sauna, tutorial rooms, a lecture theatre, residential accommodation and bar.