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Whitewater in a fiberglass canoe?

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Pretty self-explanatory title. I don't truly intend to do all that much whitewater for now, but I am curious about your experiences running WW in a fiberglass canoe, especially shorter canoes/solo canoeing a fiberglass canoe in WW. I imagine there's a lot of patching or that folks usually opt for a different material. Just curious. Tell me your stories!
 
Google Millbrook Canoes. They are all composites.

I have a Colden DragonFly . Composite and a whitewater slalom racer.

It is not about the material. It is about the lamination schedule. Layers of cloth can be applied in certain areas for more strength. These composite whitewater craft have more fabric and resin than your typical Wenonah.
 
I have run lots of whitewater in cedar strip canoes, and our club used to routinely run stuff in wood/canvas canoes. It comes down to skill levels, and knowing when to portage and when to run. The use of royalex and poly canoes gives some people a sense of comfort, but wrong choices in whitewater will seriously damage those canoes as well.
 
There are lots of composite canoes designed for whitewater these days. In fact, most larger whitewater canoes are composite since the death of Royalex. The strength of a composite boat will vary considerably depending on how much and what types of fabric are used in its construction. Generally speaking, a composite boat is somewhat more prone to crack with a very hard impact than a Royalex, T-formex, or three-layer polyethylene boat but a composite boat may be more resistant to death from repeated abrasion. Composite boats are relatively easily patched if you have any experience using resins and structural fabrics.
 
I learned whitewater skills in Royalex canoes and, if you can find them, that's the material I'd still recommend for the newbie through intermediate skill level. Royalex can bounce harmlessly off rocks that would crack composite and can pop back into shape after a wrap that could destroy composite.

Once skilled, many whitewater canoeists and kayakers paddle lightweight composite boats. But no matter how skilled, scratches and patches will always be in the whitewater future, if only because paddlers naturally tend to try steeper, bigger and harder stuff.
 
when I started running WW fiberglass or W/C were the only options- kevlar, royalex, and poly were nothing more than pipe dreams, and aluminium was just nasty- it stuck to rocks and sounded like a very bad drumline. Back then it was all about the skill, not the boat, and you advanced up through the classes as your skill and experience improved, you didn't start with cl3's. The idea then was to avoid the rocks, not do boofs off them. My old keel-less Woodstream survived well enough (one small crack in the stem that was fixed with epoxy ribbon) that it was worth stealing 40+ years later...
 
I learned whitewater skills in Royalex canoes and, if you can find them, that's the material I'd still recommend for the newbie through intermediate skill level. Royalex can bounce harmlessly off rocks that would crack composite and can pop back into shape after a wrap that could destroy composite.

Once skilled, many whitewater canoeists and kayakers paddle lightweight composite boats. But no matter how skilled, scratches and patches will always be in the whitewater future, if only because paddlers naturally tend to try steeper, bigger and harder stuff.
Yup, I regularly ran W/W with a Kevlar ultralight, including some truly big stuff like Niagara (just before they changed the rules), other than looking like someone wirebrushed it, that canoe is still fine
 
I have run more rapids in fiberglass canoes than any other kind. Second would be wood and canvas.
The good news is that they can be easily repaired. We have sunk a few and gotten home a few times with duct tape and baling. I have owned a couple of Royalex canoes which were fine but heavy.,
 
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