Chesapeake Light Craft and Nick Schade Bring Live Boatbuilding to Canoecopia 2026

Chesapeake Light Craft and strip-built kayak designer Nick Schade showed up to Canoecopia 2026 in Madison, Wisconsin this weekend with something the paddlesports expo doesn't always deliver: actual boatbuilding happening in real time, in front of an audience that knows exactly what they're looking at.

The three-day event, running March 13 through 15 at its longtime Madison home, draws a crowd that skews heavily toward DIY builders, kayak kit enthusiasts, and the kind of person who has strong opinions about epoxy brands and bead-and-cove vs. stitch-and-glue construction. CLC, the Annapolis-based kit builder that's probably responsible for more first-time wood-epoxy builds than any other single company, anchored the live demonstration side of things alongside Schade, whose work on strip-built sea kayak design has made him a reference point in the community for decades.

Live boatbuilding at an expo is a different thing than a YouTube walkthrough or a forum thread. You can watch someone fair a hull panel, ask about their preferred glass layup, or just stand there and absorb the pace of the work. For builders who are mid-project or still deciding whether to pull the trigger on a kit, that kind of direct access is hard to replicate.

CLC's presence at Canoecopia is consistent with how the company operates generally: getting tools and materials in front of people who might otherwise talk themselves out of starting. Schade brings a complementary angle, since his reputation is built on the more technically demanding strip-building side of the craft rather than kit assembly. Having both represented at the same expo gives attendees a realistic view of the range available to a DIY small-boat builder, from a well-supported kit to a fully custom strip-built hull.

Canoecopia closes out its 2026 run today, March 15, wrapping a weekend that put two of the more credible names in DIY boatbuilding on the same floor as the people most likely to actually use what they were showing.