The TC16 is a drop-stitch construction foldable inflatable 16' canoe. We travel in a Ford Transit high roof van, and currently carry an Onak canoe folded up against the ceiling. The Onak can be a little limiting, and it's getting old. So we recently bought, and then returned, a Sea Eagle TC16. This post is really to share a few things we learned about it in the process, for anyone else thinking about it in the future.
Overall, it's an impressive product. For a 16' canoe, it really packs down small, and it really is a viable 16' canoe. You can easily find YT reviews that will show you that. We didn't actually paddle ours that much, so I won't try and review stability, seaworthiness, etc. [ Edit: mfgr url: https://www.seaeagle.com/TravelCanoe/TC16 ]
First, the elephant in the room: we returned it for a few reasons, but mainly, the only place we have to store it in our van is against the (lightly insulated) ceiling. There are warnings in the canoe's documents about storing it in a place like a hot metal shed where temperatures could get "very high", or have "excessive exposure to sun and heat". Several conversations with their support team didn't yield anything more specific than that. So since a conversation with AI told me that the glues used in drop-stitch construction could fail at 110F to 120F, and since those temperatures seemed completely attainable on a hot day in a closed van, we decided to return it. Happily, Sea Eagle has a very generous 120-day no questions return policy. To be clear: if we could have stored it almost anywhere else in the van, this wouldn't have been an issue. But against the ceiling is the only possibility with our particular build-out.
Other information we learned about the boat:
There is only something like 6-1/2" or 7" between the floor and seat bottoms. I could get my feet in there when kneeling, but then felt totally trapped. We experimented with 1" wooden blocks between the seats and their mounting tabs, but even with that, the spacing is pretty tight. I think their inflatable seats, or maybe even a canoe kneeling saddle (inflatable?) might be the best answer. Honestly, even sitting on the low seats wasn't very comfortable, for me, anyway.
A couple of dimensions not listed in the specs: Beam at the front of the front seat is 30". Beam at the front of the rear seat is 29".
Grit accumulates in the crevice between the bottom and the sides, and is hard to get out. Obviously water gets in there too, and drying it isn't easy. I didn't spend a lot of time figuring out the best way, e.g., bottom deflated, sides inflated, or vice-versa.
The included manual pump is quite large. You'd probably want a much smaller pump for any kind of expedition/camping.
We got the optional electric pump, which works well. But the switch is unprotected, meaning it can easily turn on in a packed duffel, etc. So the battery (which normally plugs neatly into the bottom of the pump, forming a single unit) really needs to be pulled out when the pump is being stored. The pump looks like it's probably a rebrand of the Morpilot 20psi pump: https://manuals.plus/asin/B0CZ6NKYPM (I chose that link because it looked most likely to be around for a while. There are other sites with other pictures if you search.)
The pump's interchangeable nozzles don't really stay attached to the hose well, so when you unscrew the nozzle from the boat's valve, it's really easy to unscrew the hose from the nozzle instead. And that results in a big "Whoosh!" as all the air starts coming out of your boat.
Anyway, we'll continue using our Onak from the van. We also have a Penobscot 16 which we can transport with our car, but not the van, so it's not like we lack for canoes.
