[QUOTE="Glenn MacGrady, post: 157
I believe
@PaddlingPitt has owned and paddled both a Mad River Royalex Explorer and a Royalex Wenonah Prospector extensively on his many Barren Lands canoe trips. I'd be interested in his evaluation of the two canoes as river and lake boats.
[/QUOTE]
I’m not anywhere near an expert on canoes, Glenn, not even on the canoes that I have owned and paddled. Kathleen and I bought our first canoe in 1987, a 17.5 foot Clipper Tripper from Western Canoeing in Abbotsford, BC, a little east of our home at the time in North Vancouver. Marlon, the owner of Western Canoeing asked what kind of canoeing we had in mind. When we said lake, he recommended the Tripper, as a fast boat with excellent primary stability.
Two years later we did our first river with our canoe club, and decided we wanted to focus on rivers. We went down to the canoe store in Vancouver, where the guy recommended a Blem Mad River Explorer. We did no investigation of other models or makes. But we loved that Explorer. Was it fast on lakes? Probably not. Almost certainly not. But we have never been in a hurry on wilderness trips. After all we were there to enjoy ourselves, not to race the clock.
People say that the Explorer can’t handle water above Class 2. I say to them, “Don’t always believe what you think.” In 1990, with two other couples, Kathleen and I paddled the South Nahanni River in the NWT, starting from the Moose Ponds, which included 50 km (30 miles) of virtually continuous Class 2-4 whitewater. Our group scouted the first rapid, but then just ran. One of the other couples was also in a Royalex Explorer. Despite being fully loaded, our boats handled well in all the rapids. No problems, even in Class 3 and (maybe) Class 4.
In 1997 Kathleen and I paddled the Seal River down to Hudson Bay in northern Manitoba. I read Hap Wilson’s article in Kanawa about his trip down the Seal. The second paragraph stated “We had just finished running Nine-bar Rapids, a notorious 3.5 km long hair-raising roller coaster ride classified as a Class V rapid by Parks Canada.” Hap noted that there are inherent problems in river classification ratings, but wrote that “Everyone we talked to said that we would have to portage Nine-bar rapids, but we ran it in all its gruesome entirety.”
Kathleen and I scouted the first half of Nine-bar Rapids, but once back in the boat, we just ran to the end of Nine-bar Rapids. The fully loaded Explorer had no problems.
We have spent a lot of time and distance on tundra lakes in our Explorer. Often battling strong winds. We have been completely satisfied.
About ten years ago we bought a Royalex Wenonah Prospector. Our Explorer had suffered 37 cold cracks all the way through the hull, and the nearest canoe store, three hours away in Regina, didn’t carry Explorers. We have not tripped in challenging rapids with the Prospector, but have paddled on large lakes, including the East Arm of Great Slave. It probably has similar speed to the Explorer, as in not much. It is more rockered than the Explorer, so likely handles white water a little better. I did find it a little more difficult to turn, to clear points in strong side winds. But that could have been due to our not so perfect trim, or perhaps because of the greater rocker compared to the Explorer.
That’s about all I can say, other than “Give me a canoe and I will paddle it.”
