JOE MOORE – A Life Defined By Boats

By Chris Morris 

AGE: 60
RESIDENCE:  Lake Placid
OCCUPATION: Boatbuilder, Owner of Placid Boatworks
SPORTS: Paddling, Cross-Country Skiing, Biking, Hunting

Joe Moore has been playing with boats for nearly six decades.  

From Boy Scout outings in old Grumman canoes and solo backcountry trips in ultralight pack boats to marathon canoe races and hunting, there’s not much Joe hasn’t seen and done on the water. Nearly 60 years after his first encounter with the waters of the Adirondacks, Joe is still as passionate about paddling as ever.

“When I was three years old, my parents bought a place on Hoel Pond, which is the sort of gateway to the St. Regis Canoe Wilderness,” Joe says. “That’s when I fell in love with paddling and the Adirondacks.”

Born in Endicott, Joe and his family moved to Brewerton when he was five. A few years later, his family moved to Leesburg, Va., where he went to high school. He went to Old Dominion University for undergrad (Geography) and Antioch University New England for grad (Natural Resource Management and Administration). By 1987, he was back in the Adirondacks, where he put down his roots.

Joe has competed in a variety of distance and aerobic sports in his lifetime, including cross-country skiing and cycling. His bike racing resume includes a stint with a US Masters team in Russia and Austria, and as a Nordic skier he’s posted top results in multiple US and Canadian loppet and half loppet races. But Joe’s name is perhaps most synonymous with paddlesports, both as a racer and as a boatbuilder.

A fixture of paddlesports racing in New York, Joe has solo paddled the Adirondack Canoe Classic – more commonly known as the 90-Miler – 15 times. For the uninitiated, this race consists of three stages: day one from Old Forge to Blue Mountain Lake, day two from Long Lake to Tupper Lake, and day three from the Fish Creek Pond Campground to Saranac Lake. The race takes paddlers through big lakes, narrow brooks, meandering rivers, and miles of difficult portage trails. The course itself is hard, but weather can compound things – wind gusts, rain, high and low temperatures. It’s a grueling challenge, especially for those who go it alone. 

Through the years, Joe has posted impressive results, including a top 10 time across all categories, which means he bested paddlers in four-person canoes, war canoes, Olympic-style kayaks, and more. And in 2017, he set the mark for best time in a solo pack canoe since the category began.

“I have a lot of great memories from paddling the 90-Miler,” Joe says. “Paddling and working with other people during the race is really rewarding, especially in the solo divisions, where we socialize and support each other in a cooperative way, akin to bike racing in many ways. I’ve been fortunate to have many great people come out and help me with food and drink during and after the race, shuttles from finish lines to start lines, and just talking to all the people making their way to the same daily destination. I’ve made many friendships and bonded with so many people while paddling canoes.”

“I remember my first 90, going back and forth with a tandem boat that was evenly matched with me,” Joe adds. “The mutual encouragement and support to dig deep was amazing.”

As a stage race averaging 30 miles a day, it’s crucial to have a strong support system throughout the 90-Miler. Joe credits his friends – Ed and Patty Troischt, Ed and Linda Roesner, and Connie Perry – as well as training partner and fellow racer Morgan Hoven of Clifton Springs for his success over the years.

Despite all his accolades as a racer, his profession and trade may be his real legacy in the world of paddlesports.

Go to any race or put-in in the Northeast and you’re likely to see a Placid Boatworks canoe; you can venture far and wide and there’s a good chance you’ll spot one of Joe’s designs, whether it’s the day-tripping SpitFire, the longer and sleeker RapidFire, or the Shadow – the boat of choice for many racers. Just this past June, a brand new race in Rangeley, Maine, featured nearly a dozen of Joe’s canoes. And many of the racing accolades Joe has collected over the years have been in boats of his own design.

Joe founded Placid Boatworks in 2004 alongside Charlie Wilson. In those early days, the goal was to design and build an innovative, ultra-high-quality pack canoe. This craft can be traced back to the late 1800s, when John Henry Rushton of Canton designed a shorter, lighter variation of the standard solo canoe. Over the years, the pack boat became the go-to choice for adventure and backcountry paddlers – especially in the Adirondacks, known for the diversity of its water bodies and frequent portages. It’s also a popular choice because the design allows for the use of both single- and double-bladed paddles.

Placid Boatworks revolutionized pack boats with a modern design and rugged, lightweight materials. Joe credits his friend David Yost for helping him create a kayak-like, asymmetrical hull fit for long wilderness treks, shorter day trips, and, of course, racing. The business began by building and selling the classic 12-foot SpitFire and continues to evolve to this day, now offering six different models.

Joe became the sole proprietor of Placid Boatworks in 2010. In 2013, a major fire destroyed most of his factory, molds, and numerous boats. The paddling community rallied for Joe, helping to rebuild and ensure that his boats were back in production by the same spring – now sporting a phoenix logo, representing his business’s literal and figurative rise from the ashes. Joe now operates out of a brand new facility built on the same site as the original factory.

“When I moved to the Adirondacks, I actually started making plans to build a stitch-and-glue kayak,” Joe says. “I got to the point of drawing out the patterns, but just never executed it. Life got in the way; I was busy. I still loved to canoe but had that latent interest in building boats. I worked for the Adirondack Council for about 15 years, and once that kind of ran its course, I ended up talking with Charlie Wilson, and he and I started
the company.”

“I’m kind of lucky,” Joe says. “I get to work in the candy store. People come in here, they’re happy, they’re looking at boats, they’re gonna buy a toy, they’re going to enjoy it out in nature – for me, it’s helping people get out there. The Adirondacks are a beautiful place. When you get on the water you see things from a whole different perspective. I think that’s cool to be able to help people experience that.”

Joe and his team – which includes Royal McDonnell, an elite racer and the son of Adirondack paddling royalty Brian and Grace McDonnell (longtime 90-Miler directors, canoe racers, and more) – will never be a huge company, building around 120-125 boats annually.

“We take great pride in building some of the best boats on the water,” Joe says. He has also been a generous supporter of non-profit organizations with donations of his boats for raffles.

As Joe and the paddling community celebrate 20 years of Placid Boatworks, he plans to continue innovating, whether it’s building even lighter boats – under 20 pounds – or developing a new line of tandem pack boats.

When Joe isn’t building boats – an aerobic sport on its own, he notes – he enjoys hunting and canoe camping in the Adirondacks and out West. Some of his favorite outings are along the Upper Chubb River just outside Lake Placid, Preston Pond in the High Peaks Wilderness, Henderson Lake near the Upper Works in Newcomb, and the Oswegatchie River to High Falls. 

Chris Morris is a writer, marketing consultant, and director of communications for Northern Forest Canoe Trail; he also works with other nonprofits in northern NY. The son of Don Morris, coauthor of the famed paddling guidebook “Adirondack Canoe Waters: North Flow,” Chris is an avid paddler. He lives in New Orleans, La., and Saranac Lake, with his wife, Kaet, and dogs, Murky and Zee.