Can anyone figure out what kind of canoe I just bought?

[tileguy]

I decided to take a chance on restoring this mysterious canoe for $200 on offer up.

It seems as though Orvis paid Mad River Canoe to produce this 14 ft long, 40 inch wide, 50 lb, potentially royalex boat.

The goal is to replace the gunnels, epoxy on some skids, then install a new seat and yoke. It will be lighter to portage than my 90 lb Old Town Charles River 3 layer.

Can anyone identify this boat? I did some research but I can't figure it out.

Thanks, Greg

 

[Glenn MacGrady]

I doubt Mad River made any special hull for Orvis. They may have licensed Orvis to put its name on one of the Mad River hulls.

The Mad River Winooski was 14' long and 39" max beam. It was sold as a tandem. In the 1989 Canoe Magazine Buyer's Guide, the Winooski is listed as being manufactured only in fiberglass and Kevlar. It could have been made in Royalex in some other year. Plug the HIN into the decoder on this site to get info on the canoe, which seems to be a 1997 model:

Free HIN number Decoder for any Boat, Hull, or Vessel - HINDecoder.com

 

[recped]

I really doubt it's Royalex, RX boats rarely if ever come with flotation chambers.

The "4X" in the serial number is confusing, it's not one of the more common codes and may have been used for more than one model.

A close up image of the scrape along the keel line would help identify the material, I zoomed in on it, might possibly be Kevlar but the detail was pretty distorted when zoomed.

 

[tileguy]

Thank you for that link. The pictures and specs for the Winooski are very close. The decoder did not give me the material, but I'm leaning more towards kevlar over fiberglass based on the diagonal woven texture I can see inside. Its already cleaned up. I'll get a few better pics

 

[tileguy]

My brother and I already cleaned it up

 

[ppine]

Its a tank. Add some thwarts. Good for fishing or bird watching. Not so good for traveling.