Wenonah Argosy vs Wilderness

T clarify for Mike
The composite WildFire and you played in (I think at MFS many years ago) is not quite the same as the RX WildFire(YS) especially in the Wilds symmetrical stern bow rocker changed to a skegged stern.



I agree with PBlanc in that YS is more predictable in waves.


Wildfire vs. YS

– Last Updated: Oct-27-12 11:11 AM EST –

Any composite boat is going to paddle a bit better than a Royalex version, even if the Royalex boat is a very close copy in hull shape. The increased stiffness of the composite is a big reason, but the blunter water entry at the stems of Royalex boats makes a difference as well.

The main difference in the composite Wildfire and the Royalex Yellowstone Solo (nee Royalex Wildfire) apart from the material is that the YS has differential rocker, with an inch less at the stern. The Wildfire has sharper lines at the stems and shoulders than the Roylex YS. I have heard that the shoulders also extend up a little closer to the sheer line on the composite Wildfire than they do in the YS, but I haven't had the two close enough together to notice.

It should also be noted that there are composite versions of the Bell Yellowstone solo that share the differential rocker of the Royalex YS.

The first time I paddled a Royalex YS I didn't expect to like it a whole lot because I rather expected the differential rocker to make the stern "sticky" as I had experienced with the Argosy. I also expected it to be much slower than it turned out to be. Despite the fact that the YS has an inch less rocker in the back, it still has a bit more rocker than the Argosy does both front and back, both to my eye and by the manufacturer's specs. The shouldered tumblehome and elliptical water foot print of the YS also allows it to be healed over in a very stable and predicable fashion, so the stern hardly feels "skegged" to me.

If you look at the L/W ratios for the two boats, they are very close: just over 6.3 for the YS and just under 6.5 for the Argosy. But I think that the YS puts more of its overall length in the water than the Argosy does, so I suspect that in reality the functional L/W ratios are nearly identical. I suspect that the swede form hull shape of the Argosy gives it a slight straight ahead speed advantage on flat water, but for me it isn't noticeable, but the friendlier handling when maneuvering in current or waves of the YS definitely is.

I think the L/W
ratio of the YS is more like 5.8 and the same for the Argosy.



Charlie would have waterline lengths for the former.I think the number 5.8 is one that he once referred to. There is a lot of overhang on the Argosy. If I were to measure mine in the water I think LWL would be 13’10.



Neither is theoretically a speedster though both accelerate quickly given their little skin surface.

L/W according to CEW; Wildfire
According to my 2009 version of Charlie’s chart, the Argosy, Wilderness and Yellowstone all have a L/W of 6.0.



I like my black-gold Wildfire a lot, but I don’t think of it as multi-day tripping canoe. Of course you can trip in anything if you want or have to, but I prefer something with more volume and freeboard than a Wildfire/Yellowstone. Maybe it would work for Windwalker at his weight and a light load.

Sounds about right
None have changed design.



Speed on a trip is influenced by so many other things. Maybe you have to carry. Maybe you have to take two trips. Maybe the wind comes up.



In the course of a trip a factor of .1 probably does not matter.



I used to daytrip fourteen miles three times a week in a Keowee. I think the L/WL length was something like 3.8… 9’2" boat with a 30 inch beam.

Wilderness
On my way to Lake Placid I stopped by Adirondack Lakes and Trails and put a tape measure down the keel line of a composite Wenonah Wilderness. 177 inches, divided by 30 is L/W of 5.9.



They didn’t have an Argosy in composite. I’ll try Anne and Robbie at Raquette River next time I get over to Tupper Lake,



RX hulls are generally shorter due to shrinkage and the way the plugs are made.

You can get the Argosy in

– Last Updated: Oct-28-12 5:27 PM EST –

Tuf-weave as well, windwalker. You just have to ask.

Speaking of which, I can run a tape over my Tuf-weave Argosy Charlie. Just confirm exactly where you want me to measure to?

Cheers. Jacob.

Kevlar Ultralight Argosy
I have one, and I’d be willing to measure, too. Let me know where to measure if you’d like this info.



Jeremy

estimating waterline length with a tape
Just lay the tape down the keel line of an upside down hull, hold it tight and straight. For Argosy, have a friend hold the end of the tape at estimated 3.5 inches up st the stern due to minimal stern rocker, then estimate ~2.5" up from tape to the bow, compensating for bow rocker, and read the number.

Wildfire
I went and test paddled the wildfire on a lake yesterday afternoon. In a one word description - predictable. It did everything I asked, and didn’t give me any grief. Felt fine flat or on a rail.



So I added a nice old Wildfire to my stable. The previous owner said he had purchased it from Karen Knight, but I couldn’t find her autograph anywhere.



Was gonna hit up a Class II+ run with it today, but the wife wanted to paddle so we hit a nice scenic creek. The cool part was when we got to the put-in they were releasing water from the dam in prep for Sandy hitting hard tomorrow. I knew this before we went, by looking at the river gauge, but didn’t tell the wife. :wink: Everything else was too low. It was pretty cool getting on a flooded creek before the rains even started. It was running fast and in the trees. No WW just fast current with some swirly eddy lines. The Wildfire yielded no surprises and we got along just fine.



So for know my search and desire for a solo river tripper is quenched. Pending further adventures with the Wildfire.



Thanks for all the informative discussion.



Mike


For someone
With the skill to control that loose stern, you probably got the best of the litter.

Got to like a happy ending.

– Last Updated: Oct-29-12 4:44 AM EST –

Just to wrap things up: the composite Argosy waterline length, for all intents and purposes, is 14' lightly loaded.

One more
endorsement. We recently brought an old Wildfire into our household for my wife to paddle. She had been practicing freestyle moves in an Argosy. The Wildfire is a big improvement. It turns easier and heels further and more predictably. And, it feels faster. Should have started with the Wildfire. We’ll sell the Argosy in the spring.



Peter

I think his Wildfire is Rx
from what I read earlier in the discussion.

Wildfire. Not Wildfire. Confusion.
No one has any idea what canoe is being discussed when someone says Bell “Wildfire”. That’s because Bell immorally named two different canoes with the same name, causing massive customer confusion that still continues 10 years later, and that borders on fraud.



The real Wildfire is the symmetrically rockered hull originally produced by Bell, then Placid, and now Colden. The differentially rockered and changed shouldered hull that Bell first and immorally called a Wildfire was later changed to Yellowstone (as others have pointed out above), due probably for legal reasons when the real Wildfire production was moved to Placid.



This name confusion poisons all the “Wildfire” reviews on this site. It’s hard to know which hull is under discussion.



I vote never to call a differentially rockered hull a Wildfire no matter what Bell originally called the Yellowtone. Call it a Yellowstone. Only the symmetrically rockered hull should be called Wildfire, and it has never been made in Royalex.



I think Windwalker got a Yellowstone because he said it was Royalex. Because of this confusion, I have no idea which hull Pete Georg’s wife is paddling, though I have little doubt that in either case it’s a better freestyle canoe than an Argosy.

RX verse composite hulls

– Last Updated: Oct-29-12 7:01 PM EST –

It seem Royalex hulls are always differ from their composite versions. This goes back to the Mad River Explorer, which was shorter with blunter ends and less V in RX than in composite.

It is also true of Argosy, Cascade and Wilderness and the Mad River Guide/ Freedom as well as Bell's offerings. Of course those variations pale into insignificance when looking at Hemlock's composite Shaman and the Mohawk RX version.

The RX WildFire had do differ from the Composite because the abrupt shoulders wouldn't release from a vacuum forming mold, and of course the RX sandwich cannot bend to yield as tight an entry line. That we also halved the stern rocker doesn't seem to be a moral sin, hell, everything else was different, we were trying to improve performance for an entry level market. [RX was ~half the Kev price.]

The name change had to do with contractual arrangements. Bell de-emphasized the Wild in favor of the composite YS Solo because they owed fewer royalties for YSS.

It's probably not worth getting to exercised about which $0.50 decal got stuck on a canoe. There is more variation between other Comp[/VFRX hulls by several other manufacturers.

In the beginning there wss one WildFire mold; 14 'X30", symmetrical 2.5" rocker. There is also just one vacuum forming mold for a similar RX hull with differential rocker, length maintained but shoulders softened and a single mold for a differentially rocker composite variant with higher shoulders.

LOL
Karen always liked a boat too big for her, but I never remember her paddling a Wild. Always a Flash. But that was too big for her too technically.



I think you will have some happy paddling with that boat.

It is a Royalex Yellowstone Solo

Karen Knight in a Viper 12
There is some footage in the video “Drill Time” of Karen paddling a Viper 12 OC-1, which would be a very big boat for her indeed.

Really?
It sure looks to me that the proud stems on that boat overhang the LWL by more than a combined 6". I would have guessed that the LWL of the Argosy was somewhat under 14’ as Kim said.



To thoroughly beat a dead horse, if the true LWL of the Argosy is 14’ the LWL/BWL ratio would be 6.2. Wenonah lists a BWL of 29.75 for the Wilderness for a LWL/BWL of 5.95, virtually identical to the Yellowstone Solo if the ratio listed on Bell’s website is correct.



I do suspect that the Argosy can be driven a little faster than the YS by a really determined paddler but to me the YS feels subjectively a little quicker to accelerate.