solo canoe
Check out the Bell Merlin II. At 15 feet, it’s a foot shorter than the Magic, but has more rocker and handles nicely in moving water. If you’re looking for a Royalex solo, check out the Yellowstone Solo. It’s the updated version of the WildFire, only tracks a little nicer. You’ll blow your 16 foot counterpart away!
WildFire for sale
Phreon:
I am going to try to sell my Kevlar WildFire, having just bought a new boat. In my opinion, my WildFire meets all of your requirements except the Royalex requirement, and maybe I can get you to give up that requirement. I’m looking for $700 for the boat, which is located in Lake Placid, New York.
If anybody thinks that sales pitches are inappropriate for this part of p.net, let me know and I will subside. But for now, I bubble on…
As to tripping: I’ve happily used the WildFire for week-long trips. But I camp backpacking-style even when I’m canoe-camping (i.e., only as much weight in the backpack as I can carry across a long portage in one trip). If you’re looking to haul a big cooler into the woods (so that you have a flat surface for the two-burner Coleman stove), the WildFire probably isn’t big enough.
As to speed: The composite WildFire is pretty speedy compared to most paddlers in most plastic sea kayaks. It’s true that a sufficiently fit paddler in a long boat, using a double-bladed paddle, can always beat a single-blader in a short boat, but most paddlers aren’t strong enough to drive a plastic boat that hard. I like to paddle the WildFire hard and have never had a problem keeping up with most sea kayakers. I usually lead them, in fact. I can even keep up with casual paddlers in light, fiberglass, sprint-training boats. Of course, when any sea kayaker really tries, they can leave me behind.
As to whitewater: I’ve used the WildFire in a lot of Class I-II and the occasional Class III. It’s a delight in Class II, until you whack a rock pretty hard. (Small scrapes don’t show, since the boat’s color is Almond.) It’s very maneuverable for a tripping boat, so I can usually miss the rocks, but my boat acquired a half dozen small gel coat problems over the years (recently touched up in preparation for sale). As for Class III, I found that the boat was okay in rapids rated Class III for maneuvering but took a lot of water over the bow in rapids rated Class III for amount of drop. To me, the fragility of the gel coat and the fineness of the bow were prices worth paying for the speed and lightness of the canoe; your choices may vary. In particular, I think you mentioned “dragging” over a rock. You definitely want to think about “lifting” over that rock (the canoe weighs about 35 pounds). With that said, you don’t have to baby the boat completely. I have scrape-landed on beaches and dragged over beaver dams and bounced (lightly, lightly) off rocks in whitewater, and lost only an it-adds-up amount of gel each time.
So there you have it. I loved the boat and paddled it hard in many kinds of water for eleven years, and I am sad to see it go. I think you would find it an excellent canoe for the uses you described, if you can stand the occasional shudder of pain when you hit a rock hard.
The details: $700 for a 1994-vintage Kevlar/fiberglass WildFire (I can’t remember if Bell called the layup “White Gold” back then, but it’s comparable to today’s White Gold). Well-maintained ash rails. Almond gel. Cane seat (a little raggedy-looking, but it’s looked that way for a couple of years of frequent paddling and hasn’t failed yet). Glued-in foam flotation (looks weird but does the job). Non-scalloped deck plates (they invented the scalloping the year after I bought the boat). Grab loops and good-quality lines at both ends. And in Lake Placid.
– Mark
Vagabond vs Supernova
I have both of these boats, so here are some comments on them.
Vagabond
The Vagabond is a surprisingly quick little boat, and with a double-bladed paddle, I’ve always had no trouble keeping up with an average mix of kayakers in a mix of touring boats. Actually, I can do that with a single blade too, but above a critical speed, the double-blade becomes handy. I mostly don’t use the double-blade anymore, though I’d fall back on it if long-term speed were important to me and the waters were such that the Vagabond was my boat of choice (that’s usually not the case for me, and I end up rowing instead).
It’s not particularly maneuaverable, though not too bad. At least, it’s not so maneuverable if it’s built like mine, with ZERO rocker. If you’re lucky enough to find a Royalex Vagabond that actually has the amount of rocker that Wenonah says it should, it should be a nice “turny” boat, at least as much as it sounds like you would need it to be.
You’ll take on some water in Class-II with the Vagabond, sometimes LOTs of water if the waves are big, but Class-I and mild Class-II is no big deal. If you need to maneuver in rapids and you end up with a no-rocker model like mine, backferries and side-slips will become your friends.
Supernova
The Supernove IS a surprisingly fast boat, but I seriously doubt you will be happy with it if you use it mostly for the conditions you describe. When people say it is “surprisingly fast”, what they REALLY mean, is that it’s surprisingly fast for such a monstrous heap (dare I say “pig”?). It’s big. It FEELs big when you paddle it, and I’d go so far as to say, in spite of the fact that it responds to every nuance of every stroke once you get the hang of it, it feels downright sluggish in comparison to something much less voluminous. Yes, it CAN turn on a dime and do fancy tricks that something like a Vagabond can’t even dream about, but that doesn’t mean it moves along with any less effort than a smaller boat UNLESS you crank the speed down to a slower pace than what you are talking about, and then it’s not too bad. Yes, it’s an absolute joy in Class-II whitewater, and if you are a decent paddler you will feel invincible in this boat when in Class-II. When it comes to flatwater, it’s best used for cruising at a comfortable, more “canoe-like” pace.
Also, if you are new at solo canoeing, the Supernova will drive you absolutely bonkers for quite some time until you learn to keep it pointed the way you want it to go, because if you are new at this, it will seem to have a mind of its own. On the other hand, it will force you to become a very good paddler in much less time than would happen with many other boats unless you are one of those driven individuals who pushes your limits on the learning curve just for the fun of it. The wind tends to grab this boat too, again, because it’s so honkin BIG.
Vagabond vs Yellowstone
I’ll differ with the two previous posts when it comes to the speed issue. On those occasions when I’ve paddled a Vagabond alongside someone in a Royex Wildfire (same as the Yellowstone), I’ve always felt like I was working a lot less hard to go the same speed, and could generally leave them behind without too much trouble if I wasn’t careful. I do think the Vagabond is a sleeker design (more gradual taper toward the stems), though it is a whole lot less versatile because of that. That said, theBob is quite likely a better authority on this than me.