Yes, it would work... but you'd more than likely end up with a canoe that could be downright dangerous to put yourself into.

There's more to just taking a set of dimensions for a hull then applying some arbitrary factor to increase or decrease the overall length, with the hope of ending up with a hull with the characteristics you find attractive in the original-size craft.

18 years ago I built a pirogue from plans from another designer that ended up being basically the same size and shape that you are suggesting. But as spclark says, there's more to design than you'd get from just scaling the PC down.

For example, the capacity is 250 lbs vs 600 for the PC. That's because capacity is proportional to the cube of the scaling factor since you're scaling in 3 dimensions. The stability scales as the 4th power of the scaling factor, so the smaller boat has just under 1/3 the stability of the original.

Additionally, it's an open boat and the scaled version only has .75% of the freeboard of the original. So when put all the numbers together, you get a 1 person boat that is less stable and easier to swamp. If you know to expect that, are OK with that and use it accordingly, it could be a really fun boat. I kept mine 9 years and had a blast with it.

Rather than scaling it yourself, though, if that's the kind of boat you want I'd recommend that you get plans for a design of that size. It'll keep you from being surprised by things you didn't think of. For rxample, the PC assumes that it's going to be a big stable boat so it does things like having seats that put you up high and comfortable. The smaller boat had you sit on the bottom to lower the center of gravity and make up for the reduced stability. If you scale the PC you may miss little details like that, whereas if you get plans for a boat designed for that size from the beginning they'll be baked in.

BTW, the most common request the designer of that boat received from builders was, "Can I scale this up by just multiplying all the dimensions by x?".

Laszlo

Laszlo 'filled in' the holes in my knowledge as to the 'why' simply scaling a plan may not be a good idea. He's good at that, having been doing this stuff vastly longer than I can make any claim to.

While drafting my post above my thoughts turned to a design by the popular designer & builder Ian Oughtred, whose MacGregor design originally struck the spark of desire in me to build then sail a canoe. I've had the plans for building one for nearly 40 years!

Alas other aspects of life got between my desire and actually getting one built....

Then CLC announced their Waterlust expedition canoe design project, so I began badgering John & Co. to make it available in kit form. I think I may have bought their first one the morning kit availability was announced elsewhere here. Kit's less involved than building from plans you see....

Ian's design can be built in three lengths. And he's quite qualified to know how properly to 'bake in' the appropriate attributes each hull length profile requires to do what their builders can expect.

There may be other similarly flexible designs out there but as yet I've not fallen onto any of them....

...or, maybe you should look at a different sort of boat with something like the same building method.  Phil Bolger's Elegant Punt comes to mind that way.  Make your own oars from CLC's plans, if you need more work to keep you busy.

.....Michael

   You don't say if you are thinking about a smaller Peace Canoe as a solo or if you want it for 2.  IMO, most decent canoes for two adults start around 15' and go up from there.  I built a CLC Sassafras 12 solo canoe years ago, as my first build.  It's epoxy stitch n glue so is a bit more work that a PC was, but it went remarkably well and gets compliments still, 18 years later.  It is a great solo canoe for paddlers from my 10 year old nephew that it was built for, up to a reasonably able 200 lb Olde Farte (me).  But it was only ever used as a double when my nephew took his younger sister (6 yrs) out for a ride.  The Sassafras 16 would be a great double, and would be almost exactly the same build time as a 12.  More time than a PC, but a lot lighter and higher performing.

There are a ton of plans out there if you are up for cutting your own.  I've seen some nice plans through Duckworks Magazine from several designers.