Royalex advantage in water
The big advantage to Royalex is not that it will last longer, but that it flexes alot. When you get on top of that rock that your bow partner did not see, the hull just sort of slithers over the rock. A rigid easy paddling composite hull plays see-saw over the same rock till you scrape your way over the rock and escape. The durability is in escaping the broaching and cracking that can result if the escape from the rock does not go well.
There is a twenty two year old Kevlar hull in my yard that has been over too many beaver dams, logs, rocks, gravel bars,and other obstacles that my son’s would never admit to hitting, and it is still intact. Lots of scratches, but no leaks or cracks in the hull. And this hull is outside upside down on a rack in the sun all year round. It has never been broached in a river, or pinned. It has hit submerged stumps and rocks at race speed and never crack or holed.
Composites are durable if built well, and Royalex is still the best choice for downriver work where the hull must survive heavy impacts and travel over obstacles.
Bill
Ranger Otter
The Ranger Otter is a nice boat.
I’ve had one for about 2 months now and I would say I have no regrets. Bought it site unseen after talking to a couple of dealers and another owner. It’s a poly/E-glass w/Kevlar reinforcement construction. I went w/the wood trim. Tandem it paddles nice. For solo it works good but you need to add a kneeling thwart, or order it w/one. That makes a huge difference in how it feels solo IMO.
It’s a nice boat for the money. Quality workmanship, good performance. Compares favorably to a couple of the more name brand boats that cost twice the price.
I love my royalex Wenonah sandpiper.
It’s a solo and weighs around 38lbs. I paddle mostly rocky rivers. I also paddle where there are a lot of downed trees and log jams, so scootching or dragging over logs is a common occurence. The first summer I had this boat I wrapped it on a rock on the South Llano River in Texas. I thought the boat was totally trashed when the bottom caved in from the force of the current. We unpinned the boat and it popped back into shape instantly. There is a permanent crease across the middle of the boat, though. I took it to the dealer the first chance I got with only one question. “Is this damage cosmetic or structural?” I breathed a sigh of relief when he said it was only cosmetic. I use this boat a lot (18 different rivers since the first of this year, with over 300 river miles). I am so glad I purchased royalex because of the type of paddling I do. I had no idea when I bought the boat that I would be having such a yee-haw time bouncing off of rocks and such. I thought I would just be doing tame stuff like swamps, lakes, and flat, slow rivers. It isn’t a whitewater boat, but does a very decent job on Class I-II rapids. Good luck with your decision process, and have fun on the rivers.
River Goddess
fiberglass…
I have an old Oscoda Coda glass solo canoe that I’ve had for going on 20 years now. It’s seen PLENTY of use on rocky, gravelly Ozark streams. The gelcoat on the bottom in mostly gone for the last two feet on the ends, it’s been holed once with a small puncture, and holed again with a BIG split, but that time was caused by running into it with my farm tractor! I just lined the edges of the split back together and smeared a huge glop of 2 part clear epoxy over the split on inside and outside, and rubbed it smooth with a wet rag when it was partially but not fully hardened. Did the same thing, with a lot less epoxy, to the smaller hole. It also has a lot of hairline cracks in the gelcoat from bumps and from teetering on logs with lots of weight in the canoe, but that just adds character.
Bottom line is, the glass canoes will last quite awhile on rivers, and are easy to repair, especially if you don’t much care what they look like. I don’t use the Coda much anymore because I like to fish, and the fiberglass is a lot noisier than Royalex when you scrape it over the rocks and gravel in the riffles. But it’s a sweet paddling design, and I still use it when I’m floating streams with lots of long, dead pools, because it’s faster and better tracking through the flat water than my Wenonah Vagabond.
My vote for polyethylene
Old Town Discoveries and Mad river TT boats are made of three sandwitched layers of polyethylene. My boats weight 10 to 25 pounds more than royalex or fiberglass models but they are super durable. One is about 12 years old and has had many bad surf landings on rocks and it has been wrapped around a boulder on white water.
That wrapping took about a week in the sun before it was straight again, but all the other rocks have just left scratches and minor cuts that don’t go through the outer layer.
If you don’t mind the weight and want something tough, then layered polyethylene is the way to go.