Dan and Eddy,

Your theory is right on, dating back to @ 1990. There was some change
mandated in the composition of Royalex sheets around '90. The Royalex
in pre-1990 boats is unquestionably tougher stuff; we have canoes from
the 80's that have seen 20 years of realtively hard use that are in
better shape then some out our other canoes that are less than 10
years old.

Even weirder are some of the boats that were built in '90/'91. I'd
always thought it best to avoid those years in used canoes - there was
some really bad Royalex around the time of the change. In one
interesting case a friend has a small solo canoe (1990) that he always
claimed was absurdly heavy. I have the same model canoe dating from
1988 and always thought he was maybe talking about a few pounds until
I had the chance to lift his boat. JEEZE - I didn't have a chance to
weigh it, but it had to be at least 25-30% overweight. Looking at the
bright side, at leats it wasn't soft and floppy like some bad 90's
Royalex.

Our newest Royalex canoes (2003 models) are sickeningly soft, they
"bruise" easily and the outer vinyl layer seems to wear away faster.
Kinda makes me wonder if perhaps the Royalex sheets have gotten even
less tough of late. And really makes me think that if I found a well
kept pre-1990 canoe in a model that I liked I'd snap it up (I do now
one tough-on-boats fellow who seeks out old Royalex for just that
reason).