Does Esquif now have production rights for the royalex Wildfire? From web pics the Echo seems to a closer facsimile to the original composite Wildfire than the Bell Yellowstone.
Anyway, whatever, Esquif seems to have a winner with this one. Somebody in marketing at Esquif was listening. Who is selling the Echo in the Midwest?
rutabaga
Definitely not a Wildfire. Pretty wide at the gunwales and very shallow. A nice paddling boat though.
Had all three at Adirondack Canoe
Symposium last year and by far the Echo had the widest dimensions at the rail. The hull shape is different too.
Unfortunately specs give a limited sense of shape. All the boats are different.
Thanks
Still, its got to be a better paddler than the dumbed down Yellowstone.
YS diverged from WF
to address a different market…the beginning intermediate market which at one time we all are.
Esquif made a nice day tripper in the Echo for folks who like more WildFire like performance.
Rationale of Yellowstone Solo
That is the conventional, accepted rationale but that didn’t make it rational. It wasn’t like the Wildfire had 5 freaking inches of Rocker. What they achieved with the newbing down was taking an excellent paddling boat and making a mediocre paddling boat that was not actually any easier to paddle than the Wildfire.
So you don’t like it
that is fine. Perhaps you would like to talk to the designer.
That’s what I did.
I voted with my wallet.
Sold the YS and bought a Flashfire, endorsing a great canoe design and designer. Evolution vs. devolution.
Echo
I have owned both(Royalex Wildfire/yellowstone solo) and they are very different. I found the Echo a much better handling boat(it was designed in consultation with 2 freestyle champions). I narrowed my Echo which is easy to do on a roylex boat.The royalex wildfire has more freeboard so may be a better bigger water boat. The Echo an easyer paddling boat with less freeboard which helps in the wind. I much prefered my Echo for my use and I am only selling it due to too large a fleet and elbow problems with it’s 46# weight. This comparison applies only to the royalex wildfire/yellowstone solo-not the composite wildfires which are a totally different animal. I plan to take my Echo to AFS to take classes in if it doesn’t sell by then.
Turtle
Both YS and Wild were designed
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by the same designer. Flash too. That little tidbit tells me alot about you. You simply don't fit the YS.
Your wallet is not the same shape nor are you as others and their wallets.
WTF?
Are you trying to tell me that the Fire series and the YS were designed by the same dude? Damn, learn sumpin every day. I mean, who’d have thought by looking at those hulls and paddling them that they might have had a common origin? Sheesh, I thought convergent evolution was at work there.
Nah
The Wildfire is a dancer. The Yellowstone plods.
Both will get you down the river or across the lake. Both are predictable. Neither is difficult to control. The Wildfire is a dancer. The Yellowstone plods.
Same designer. VERY different performance.
I understand why many designers skeg sterns. But I don’t believe the benefits claimed are achieved, while the drawbacks are all too evident.
I would SO love to see a Royalex Wildfire. Not the Bell which was truly a Yellowstone, but a hull as close to the composite Wildfire as Royalex would allow.
That’d be a sweet river runner.
sure
they’re all David Yost designs, aren’t they? He’s done something like 200 canoe designs of all types. Maybe not that many, but its a lot. It hardly strikes me as odd that the same designer would design different canoes for different purposes.
There aren’t any
This is how DY explained it to me… When Bell decided to bring out a new Royalex version of the Wild, a new mold was needed… Because molds are scary expensive the decision was also made to adapt the new Royalex boat (which was going to be cheaper than composite) to a wider market (recoup costs). No doubt WF has its supporters, and deservedly so as does FF, but that is too niche for Royalex.
Skegging the stern and tweaking the shape addressed those concerns. IIRC no rubber WF was ever made. Molds just don’t get made for a few boats.
Maybe my mind is gone or faulty. If so CEW will be around.
Now where does the Echo fit? Since there was no rubber WF with symmetrical rocker, this is a unique boat that fits some paddlers needs well.
At Adirondack Canoe Symposium last year there were two Echoes and a good deal of interest for those interested in something along WildFire lines but in a Royalex layup. There is not much out there save for the Mohawk Solos 13 and 14, When you are starting out, budget does matter. Karen Knight and her friend had the two Echoes. Needless to say they did quite well in them and did things we mortals dare not try.
I don’t see why …
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... the Yellowstone hull shape would have been more attractive to the marketplace than the true Wildfire hull shape in Royalex. I agree with TC1 and probably a lot of others: the Wildfire is a much better paddling hull shape than the skegged and re-shouldered Yellowstone.
If there was problem with marketplace acceptance for the true Wildfire, it was probably due to the high price of the composite layup. Bell's changing of the true Wildfire hull shape when they went Royalex was a mistake, in my opinion.
Worse, Bell basically lied to the marketplace by calling the very different asymmetrical Royalex hull shape by the same Wildfire name. This name game shame pollutes many of the Pnet review of the Bell "Wildfire". Readers have no way of knowing whether the reviewer is talking about the real Wildfire or the faux Wildfire (later renamed Yellowstone) unless the review reveals whether the boat under discussion is composite or Royalex.
To break the code you have to know two things. There was never any true Wildfire made in Royalex by Bell (or any other company). There was never a composite faux Wildfire marketed by Bell under the Wildfire name; all the composites were made after the name was changed to Yellowstone.
As to the Esquif Echo, I've never paddled it but it looks like a nice day paddling boat, though skewed by a shallow depth design to facilitate easy heeling for interpretive ACA Freestyle stuff. I don't consider an 11.5" center depth to be a serious tripping, river or even big lake canoe, except possibly for very small and lightweight paddlers in easy waters.
No there aren’t any
Lot’s of folks paddle Yellowstones because of the Wildfires rep, a royalex price point and the reputation royalex has for being good in the rocks (that’s a whole other discussion). Either they don’t know what they are missing or they figure the Yellowstone is good enough.
A true Wildfire, in royalex, would be a pretty sweet boat I think.
Sadly it only exists, right next to the royalex unskegged Osprey, in my dreams.
Maybe DY and Charlie (and Paul?) ought to talk to Esquif?
Don’t forget the royalex Flashfire for
us smaller paddlers.
Echo
I don’t live in the midwest-I live in western NY,but I have my echo for sale.
Turtle
rblturtle…
Sent you a PM re" Echo; PM was rejected as non-deliverable?
BOB
Sorry
Sorry my address was out of date,gee maybe I had dozzens of offers!
Turtle