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Depends on the damage but, yes. I’ve repaired deep gouges in royalex using nothing but a plumbers torch…pretty easy. They sell all sorts of repair sticks, plastics, etc for repairing a royalex hull (I’ve even heard of people using heat to liquify Legos, plastic army men, and even milk jugs) and they’re inexpensive compared to similar repair options for composites…just saying is all. I’m not at all against composite hulls mind you…for me, the added cautions I’d have to take to paddle one takes a lot of fun out of paddling…for me. I consider myself average so I feel others probably get what I’m saying too. Still, my dream solo is a composite Colden Wildfire…life is too short and the piggy bank is never full enough.
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The Morningstar is a great canoe for this purpose too…it’s width probably makes it well suited as a boat for making video and photography from.
Had/have composites and rx boats
– Last Updated: Mar-28-11 1:58 PM EST –
Royalex gouges are easy to repair - which is a good thing because it gouges so easy - much more easily than even the gel-coated composites. Rx is more likely to survive catastrophic damage such as from being wrapped on a rock. But composites suffer less from typical dragging damage and serious damage from rock-bashing isn't hard to repair - although it is hard to make the repair pretty.
If rx wasn't so much cheaper in up-front cost, few of use would choose it.
edit: That is - few of us with much experience, who aren't running big whitewater.
not quite
Some have had luck repairing or reinforcing weakened Royalex by melting pieces of ABS in acetone of methyl ethyl ketone and painting the slurry onto the hull and allowing it to dry.
I have tried it and not found it to be very durable.
Be careful with using a torch or any heat source around Royalex. It is very easy to deform the foam core in this way and that damage is very hard to repair.
Welding techniques and melting milk jugs (which are polyethylene) or repair sticks are techniques primarily applied to boats made of high density linear polyethylene, like Old Town Discovery canoes.
It is relatively easy to fill punctures in Royalex with epoxy, or other substances, but so is it on composite craft. Serious repairs on Royalex can be made using fiberglass cloth and epoxy, but then exactly the same is true for composite boats.
A potential problem with such repairs on Royalex boats is that the epoxy-impregnated fiberglass patch is significantly stiffer than the Royalex creating a stress riser at the edge of the patch, and sometimes the boat will crack at the edge of the repair.
How about
A WeNoNah Prospector 15, or a Nova Craft Bob Special or Pal? I think any of those would fulfill your requirements.