You know, fiberglass can be made to be tough as nails, I've often
thought I should have bought a Wenonah Edge, Roger Scott had one for
cheap years back. Looked about like the Mohawk Edge, or maybe a
little like a Viper, I can't quite remember. Cool graphics in the gel
coat though. I have had some hellacious hits on my flat water
composite boats, they almost always bounce back for more.

From my experiences with a heavily reinforced polyester/polyester
FRP canoe, that 'only' got scratches where (my) Royalex canoe was
deeply dented, I still have the idea that a heavily reinforced
Kevlar canoe will outperform a Royalex canoe in most aspects, except
of course accidents like wrapping around obstacles? True, such a
Kevlar canoe would be (about?) as heavy as its Royalex counterpart,
and cost (a lot?) more. But for touring purposes uses it would
perform much better than Royalex in all aspects, I guess. Point
however is that the Kevlar canoes (that I know) are built for
lightweight, not for strength. In the past, stronger (but heavier)
all-cloth Kevlar canoes were offered by some canoe companies, but
now they are all(?) built with cores. Possible reason for this is that
it will be very hard to sell expensive Kevlar canoes that weighs
about the same as their Royalex counterparts? So I guess it really
is a 'market' problem: there aren't enough customers (if at all?)
that ask for heavy duty Kevlar canoes? But I wonder if this is
because people really prefer Royalex, or is it because they are not
(made) aware that a Kevlar canoe could be made strong enough for
touring purposes, only with a weight penalty?

After having used Royalex canoes for some time now, I think that,
for the _same_ weight, the next time I need/want a very strong
touring canoe, I will try to get a heavy duty Kevlar canoe instead.
In the meantime I will see how my lightweight cored Kevlar
canoe holds up. Till now, it seems to do fine enough.

Dirk Barends