Old Town Penobscot 16

Summary

Versatile and responsive, this canoe is a great all-arounder. Great as a short tripper, on easy to intermediate whitewater, or on flatwater.

This canoe is a great do-everything option. It's reasonably fast and straight-tracking on flatwater. It's stable and responsive on class I and II whitewater, class III perhaps with a skilled paddler.  

I've used this canoe on trips of up to 4 days and it performs great, but the load capacity is really insufficient for anything much longer. While best used as a tandem canoe, you can also paddle solo in the right conditions.  

If you're solely going to do long wilderness lake country trips, look elsewhere. If you want a rough-and-tumble river canoe, there are better choices out there. But if you want an excellent general duty canoe that doesn't do anything perfectly, but does everything well, then the Penobscot is a great choice!

The 16 is, IMHO, a better boat than the 17. The latter is an extended version and isn't as handy. The 16 is capable of tripping on lakes and easy rivers, up to Class II. While initially tender, it has good secondary stability. It is arguably one of the fastest Royalex canoes around.