Choosing a whitewater canoe?
Michael Hearn Anna Houpt wrote:
I understand where you're at. It's a little like saying, " I need a car to
drive to work, any ideas?." A used whitesell comes to mind. It just over 14
" long, maybe 5 inches of rocker, and enough volumn to handle class 4 with
camping gear. Dagger stopped making canoes but there are a number of older
"encores" , "prophets" and "capers" out there on the used market. they are
slightly small versions of the whitesell.
Mohawk in Florida still makes several models for a reasonable price. Check
them out before you but an Expensive used boat.
Whoa! Puh-LEEEZ exclude the Prophet from that list. The Prophet was a
very short, very radical, and (to my mind) very bad design. It came
out at the same time as the Ocoee (around 1993 IIRC), and I rented each
one for a weekend of test paddling. I subsequently owned and wore out
four Ocoees. Dagger sold (I would estimate) many hundreds of Ocoees
and a few dozens of Prophets. The Prophet sucked severely.
But for the OPs purposes it is enough to know that it was very short
and very radical, and does not belong in the list of big-guy whitewater
boats like the Whitesell, Encore, Genesis, Rival, Caper and Caption.
A wonderfully forgiving, but rather expensive, new Class IV whitewater
OC for big guys is the Bell Prodigy X. I doubt if there are any on the
used-boat market yet.
-Richard, His Kanubic Travesty
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