Yes, absolutely…
…I would do a week-long river camping trip in the Aurora. But just to clarify - I am an average-size adult with “normal” BMI, as is my wife - and we would be carrying about 150lbs of gear. And as I said - that would be limited (for us, anyway) to easier class 2 water.
The Spirit II may or may not be a little faster for you - but as Kayamedic said below, not so much that you are likely to notice. But it will catch a little more wind, due to its deeper hull. But if you figure on having more than average weight on board, you may be better off with the Spirit II.
OTOH - if you and your paddle partner are relatively light weight, and have lightweight camping gear, you may be happier in the Escapade - especially if your river is very flat and prone to windy conditions.
Also - I agree with Kayamedic that the OT Osprey ain’t a bad canoe. Unless you find yourself cramped for room or running out of freeboard with your camping gear, I probably wouldn’t be afraid to do such a trip in that boat. One of my previous canoes was a Wenonah Fisherman, which is fairly comparable to the Osprey (wider, actually). While it lacked the glide of longer and narrower boats I’ve had (notably the MR Malecite), that wasn’t much of an issue where current was working for us.
How’s your technique and do you have reasonably good paddles? If money is an issue, you may get more bang for your buck dealing with those two issues before buying a bigger canoe (or not).
Where in NC
are you located? We have a Jensen 18, a Minn2, and an 18 foot SCR in our greater fleet, and several shorter canoes. I have tripped with the Jensen and had no problems up in the adrondacks with manuevering or portaging. When you are running light in a Jensen designed boat the wind is a bigger factor then an old grumman: BUT they are so fun to paddle and enjoy the Glide.
If you get close to Charlotte look us up.
Charlie
18 feet is nice -
The way I see this if you are taking annual trips of a week in or more paddling tandem a 17 or 18 foot tripping canoe is a very nice thing to have. The extra length over a 16 foot boat gives you a LOT more capacity for food etc. Also, the boat will be faster and more seaworthy than a 16. A longer boat will be more comfortable and you can keep your gear below the gunwales. Also, I honestly don't see any downside to having a longer boat unless you can only have one boat and you want to paddle solo at times - but even then I have paddled a 17 solo on trips many times. Ultimately a 17 might be the sweet spot.
There are certain situations where royalex is probably the best way to go over composite. You won't find many composite boats in the arctic. The reason is that while composite is a lot more durable than you might think, a royalex boat is basically bomb proof - like a 4X4 Pickup Truck - and that is what you need and want when you are in rough and extremely remote conditions. You want to be able to drag the boat if you need to without destroying it. But as you get older it sure is nice to have a light boat and indeed they are much more durable than you might think.
Ideally I'd like to own a royalex tripping boat - maybe an old town tripper or one of the prospector boats which can be had used for around $600 - AND a composite tripping boat. But, if I could only have one boat - it would be a royalex boat. This is because most of the tripping I do does not involve a lot of portaging. If you are paddling a lot on flatwater with portages - I'd go with composite. If you are on moving water with portages a composite prospector type hull is a good compromise because it does have a bit of rocker. I've never been a big fan of the go fast and straight composite hulls that are intended primarily for flatwater mostly because I don't care so much about all out speed and I do care about turning ability. I tend to be in moving water a lot.
These decisions all involve compromise and sometimes is comes down to budget and also knowing the kind of water you are most likely to find yourself in. Also, the truth is you can do a week long trip in almost anything.
what?! no miracles?!
But I was hoping!
“Toiling” is what I do in the bow of our Osprey. It’s not comfortable up there.
Anyhow, you have a good point. If we just go 15 miles a day in the Osprey, so what? It’s paid for and we can certainly enjoy the river. 
G
the Roanoke River . . .
from Weldon down to the Albemarle Sound. I have never paddled a straight-keeled canoe (if that’s the right term), so it’s good to know that maybe the long straight ones CAN be turned!
No much sharp turning required on the wide Roanoke except perhaps back in the swamps to reach some of the camping platforms – last 40 miles or so. The river is mainly a slow float.
Thanks for the invitation. Sounds like you’ve got an enviable fleet there in Charlotte.
Ginger
log raft?
You could paddle a log raft and have just as much fun! On the other hand I like my MNII on camping trips or day paddling. In flat or slow water turning is a non-issue especially if you have a good bow paddler .I believe it is more efficient, loaded, than any 16 or 17 foot canoe I have tripped in with the same load even at a slow pace. From what I have seen the people in a group camping trip that are in a MNII or Itasca’s ECT. are paddling a “comfortable” pace and the 17 foot Grumman’s, alumacrafts, Souris rivers, spirit II or what ever are “working” to keep up. Thats just what I have observed on the water.
Bob
Royalex is bomb proof?? Not.!
Anyone running Royalex in the remote arctic should have a full repair kit similar to what is used for a glass/Kevlar boat, plus the knowledge and experience to use it.
Go to cboats.net and you’ll see discussion of Royalex repair issues all-the-time.
I have to agree with that
A lot of whitewater open boat creekers have abandoned Royalex canoes now that there are decent rotomolded polyethylene canoe alternatives like the Spanish Fly, Blackfly boats, Esquif L’Edge, or the Prelude. Some of these guys were wearing out boats in less than a season’s use.
I am in the process of repairing a fleet of 16 tandem Roylex canoes used by a local livery. These canoes have all been used on guided trips and never used on whitewater, only moving flat water and lakes. But the stems often get ground up onto concrete boat ramps when people board and exit.
The boats are all Bells and Wenonahs (good quality) and 6-8 years old. All have wear through the vinyl outer color layer at the stems (not a big deal) but 5 were worn through into the foam core at one or both ends, and 3-4 others were ground down to the point of being close. These boats probably get used around 60-70 days a year.
In fact, if I anticipated having to drag my canoe any distance on a wilderness trip it would tend to sway me toward a gel-coated composite boat.
For dragging, I’ve thought of cutting a
panel out of a plastic garbage can, and clipping it under the boat so that it takes all the grinding. It wouldn’t weigh much and could sit in the bottom of the boat when not in use.
There are certain places, like Skylift take out in Little River Canyon or some exit trails on the Chattooga, where being able to drag rather than carry would be a blessing, rather than a blessing out.
Hmmm.
Creek Boats are a completely different animal.
Do you folks actually use composite on arctic trips?
Not saying that Royalex isn’t top
choice. But it isn’t bombproof. Royalex is fine for the arctic wilderness, or for anyplace where there won’t be long portages.
If a lot of very long portages are required, a properly made composite boat may be better.
I don’t think people should be running class 2-3 rapids on arctic rivers unless they have the skill to make boat damage very, very unlikely. Even so, sometimes it will be necessary to portage the boat. One can’t say, “Oh, it’s a Royalex boat, let’s go for it.”
Of course I agree.
I did not mean to suggest such a silly thing. No boat is truly bombproof. When you are paddling an arctic river your mindset changes completely. No rational person would ever go there without the skills and also without a healthy dose of humility and caution. You do not want crazy careless young bucks along on the trip who have not lived long enough to have made mistakes and learned from them. You want grown ups. Any doubt? carry. A foolish paddler with an inflated view of his or her own skill level is a disaster in that environment, a danger to himself and his trip mates. At least that is my approach in that environment. I suppose others take a different view.
I did hear of one very accomplished arctic paddler running some heavy layup composite up there once - can’t remember his name right now. But I honestly believe that there really is no doubt that royalex is by far the most prevalent, and with good reason. Composite boats are wonderful in many environments - and no doubt you could paddle a composite boat on an arctic river. It would not be my choice.
But my question remains - do you run composite boats when you are on lengthy trips in the arctic? I’d be interested to hear how it worked out.
I can’t comment
on the choice of materials for Arctic use having never been on an Arctic trip. I have used composite boats on self-supported trips up to a couple of weeks in length but not on remote rocky rivers.
Royalex may well be the material of choice on a remote venture in which catastrophic failure would have serious consequences. Royalex is more likely to survive a serious pin or very hard impact with an immovable object. But Royalex has an Achille's heel and that is its relatively poor abrasion resistance. The material is quite soft compared to composites.
Take a piece of coarse sandpaper to a Royalex boat and a composite boat (as I have done to do patch repairs and apply abrasion plates) and you can confirm this very quickly. I recently heard a story regarding an open boater who walked out of a river gorge during a whitewater run by dragging his Royalex boat by its bow and stern painters hull down along the steel rails of a train track and wore the boat down into the foam core after a couple of miles.
A couple of years ago, Dave Yost told me a story about a river trip involving a good bit of dragging in which he paddled a composite boat and others used Royalex. At the end he said his boat was "scratched up" but the Royalex boats were "shot".
Northland?
Not sure how we got from “slow coastal river” in the US to the Canadian North, in this thread…
But I have both composite and royalex canoes. For the OP’s stated use, I’d still recommend one of several composite layups as preferable over rx - the Wenonah Tuff-Weave discussed earlier being one of them.
No one takes a new boat on an Arctic
trip. I have only been there once and the boat was Royalex. Unlike most boats which have one way journeys and are abandoned on the tundra we had a road out and could extract our boat. Flights out with a boat are very expensive and sometimes externally tying on the boat is not allowed.
So as the folks that live up there have little use for a recreational canoe (they use large motorized freight canoes), there are many abandoned Royalex canoes on Arctic shores.
Colemans are also used. For hard shell boats the cheaper the better. Many canoeists are going to PakBoats as they collapse to be transported by air.
What happens in the Arctic has little relevance to North Carolina if the OP is not going to the Arctic.
Too expensive…
I have to agree with a few others that mention the price is too high.
There are other boats that you could buy new for less money, and get more versatility. As an example the Old Town Penobscot 16 in Royalex, it’ll handle the class 1 and 2 of the Piedmont streams, e.g. Uwharrie, and will paddle with relative ease on the slow moving streams, e.g. Cape Fear and the Roanoke. I used the examples of the Uwharrie and Cape Fear because they are rivers I have paddled in my Penobscot.
As an owner of a Minn II…
I have enjoyed "Big Blue" thoroughly for racing as well as just lilydipping with other rec paddlers. It's a great tripping boat which actually performs better when fully loaded. It handles tight turns well like you'd find on most of the piedmont rivers, and it does great on open water too, handling snotty conditions well (which includes weekend stinkpots, lake lice, and Miami vice muscle boats too!) I can easily load and unload it by myself, and if you need to portage it, it's easily done solo or tandem. Mine has a gelcoat which makes it weigh around 46 lbs. As long as you don't plan to go bushwhacking or rock hopping, it should fulfill most of your paddling needs. I've logged around 5000 miles on mine from Algonquin to the Adirondacks to Key Largo. I highly recommend it!
price is a little high
on that boat. I will bet you it is a Jensen 18 though.
I bought one this spring used for $1400, in Kevlar. They are very very good boats though, quite fast, nice and stable. If you are willing to shell out the money, get it, but its a little high.
They do have stickers on them that say “Wenonah”, “Jensen Designed”, and “Kevlar 49”.
If you want faster, step up to an 18’+. 16’ you are not really going to notice much.
info overload
Please, test paddle before you buy. I have some experience with the boats under discussion and your skills and size will be important. IMHO the 18 jensen is particularly tippy and hard to turn. with gear it should be more stable but harder to turn. Good luck.
Mostly true - forget the arctic thing
My point for the OP is that Royalex boats are a excellent option for many trippers in his area and elsewhere and might be the best option for him/her. There are advantages and disadvantages.