Come test-paddle a Souris River Canoe at Red Rock Wilderness Store!
Stop in at Red Rock Wilderness Store this summer and put a Souris River on the water. You can see for yourself, first-hand, why Souris River Canoes are better than Bell, Wenonah, Old Town, Mad River and all the other builders of "racing-performance-oriented" canoes made with inferior vinylester resin, foam core bottoms, plus tippy hull shapes, low freeboard, and the inability to turn or ride up and over waves. Despite the fluff written by the more sensitve paddlers who claim that all canoes are good and you need to find the tandem that fits, I say BUNK! Whether you are an expert or novice a Souris River Quetico 17 will work very well for you in most conditions of general purpose paddling.
You can test different canoes until you're blue in the face and get yourself all confused. Here are my observation and these are the reasons for buying Souris River Canoes as told to me by our actual customers - over and over again.
You don't believe that Souris Rivers are better than any other kevlar canoe made? Click this link and see if an aluminum canoe or a plastic canoe OR a foam core, vinylester resin, kevlar canoe could withstand this and still get you home: CLICK HERE
If you ultimately end up with the average kevlar canoe, you will spend 30% or more of your paddling time sitting on shore waiting for the wind to calm down. A Wenonah MN II lacks sufficient freeboard in the center of the canoe and the ablility to turn into the wind because it has no rocker. The sales pitch for these canoes is that low freeboard allows crosswinds to pass over the canoe and the rockerless design allows for straight fast paddling. These are racing design concerns and OK if you never need to turn your canoe into the wind. Along with wind crossing the gunwales, so will water so I'm not really convinced that low freeboard and inability to turn is a good thing unless you don't mind getting wet. It's simple to understand and it happens: low freeboard on a narrow canoe can allow big waves over the side more easily. Plus, having the usual rigid styrofoam core in the bottom (as is the case with the vast majority of all vinylester resin kevlar canoes), this type of kevlar canoe can suffer more damage when it rides over an obstacle in the water such as a rock or log.
If you end up with Bell, you will most likely always feel that tender, tippier feeling that they seem to build into the bottoms of most of their hull designs. Some folks get used to that...I don't much care to be worrying about what the canoe is doing all day long when I'd rather be fishing. And while there's no doubt that Bell produces a pretty canoe, the clear gel coat they use on the outside takes a real pounding and cracking on the rocks.
Mad River's Malecite is a hull design made for paddling on "Golden Pond" with no wind - it's fast, fun to paddle, but worthless with a load. Again, it offers no freeboard, has no rocker, and as a result, takes water over the side in strong crosswind. The Mad River Explorer is a 16' tug boat that doesn't know which side of it's cantilevered bottom it should rest on when you sit in it while empty so it shifts suddenly and scares the crap out of you until you get used to it making its sudden, but harmless shift from side to side.
If you end up with any Old Town, you'll have a proud, heavy plastic pig to load up on your car at the end of the day when you are tired - the same goes for Coleman, Wenonah royalex, and Bell royalex models including those house-brand Bells from the big-box retailers, and Novacraft, Buffalo, and several others. In my opinion, these canoes are nothing more than sluggish, heavy chunks of plastic. They are tough and expensive for what you really get. Most plastic canoes provide you with mediocre paddling performance, more weight than an aluminum canoe, and substantially more cost than an aluminum canoe as well. (So why not just buy an aluminum canoe especially if price is a concern? They're tough, heavy lighter & cheaper than plastic canoes AND easier to control on the water.)
Plastic canoes don't offer any more durability that 's worth mentioning over aluminum unless you make it a point to handle your canoe like a gorilla. For the majority of folks who have at least a little respect and exercise some common sense while using their canoe, plastic canoes don't really offer anything but excessive weight and price. Why do they exist? Prior to high oil prices, they were fast & profitable to build when considering the automated process of vacuum forming which eliminates a lot of handwork that is required in kevlar canoes. Also, they can literally be cranked out in the production line. It's no wonder that everybody was jumping on the heavy plastic canoe bandwagon in the canoe selling industry. Except for brutal, "down-river-bashing-on-rocks-hourly-by good-ole-boys-with-beer" conditions, plastic canoes are WAY overrated. Anyway, this is something to think about.
