About the only oil I use on boating stuff is Deks Olje #1. You apply multiple coats with a brush, wet on wet until the surface won't soak up any more and then wipe off the excess after the last coat. It may take five or six coats, but the application is very fast and easy and doesn't need to be fussed over. In a day or two it's dry and a gorgeous oil finish. Occasional refresher coats are again just brush, wipe and let it dry. It will be fine while you are actually using the boat, but you really don't want to store it out in the weather.
I refuse to use linseed oil on anything. As far as I'm concerned, BLO sucks, as it were. Slow drying, often eventually turning black, and the fact that the Forest Product Lab's tests showed it to be really good food for the organisms that create rotten wood are enough reason that I won't use it.
I've used Watco on boats, but believe Deks #1 is much better and easier to do on big pieces of wood. I do use Watco on gunstocks though. I sand up to 320 grit, wipe on a thin coat and let it penetrate for about 30 minutes. This initial coat is mostly to check and make sure that the surface is clean of any contamination and taking the oil evenly. Then I brush on a very heavy coat and let it sit for about 45 minutes - at which point, it will be very gummy. Finally, I take a piece of sturdy cloth like flannel and start wiping it off. This is quite a battle at first, but you keep at it until it is no longer sticky. This may mean 20 minutes of rubbing on a walnut butt stock before it's done. Once finished, it's a gorgeous satin oiled surface and smooth as a baby's bottom (though never having kids, I can't say I have ever actually touched a baby's bottom and don't plan to at any point in the future).
As boats go, a canoe is small enough that if you really wanted to, you could probably do that sort of Watco treatment to the hardwood trim. I'm not sure whether or not it would work on cedar and spruce, where Deks #1 would certainly work great. Again though, I wouldn't store oiled finishes outside. These are all Watco refinishing jobs, and they were all disassembled, stripped of the factory varnish, oil refinished and reassembled in 24 hours or less using the flooded Watco technique.