Description:
Fast turning C1 creek boat, lots of volume in bow and stern.
User Comment:
An E-mail from Frank Billue regarding the Magnet!: I'll be dammed (a pun) I never thought I'd see another Magnet. My friends, Dave and Paul, and I designed it in our garages back in 1993 or so. Paul was the real design genius and we spent hours laying wood strips and planing out the hull shape, then we'd go the Payette and try her out, discuss the chine, hull shape, width, deck ect and go back to the garage to add gelcoat or shave off some wood. When we were finally as satisfied as we could be with it, Paul sent the prototype to Valley Mill Boats Andy Bridge and he started to produce them in kevlar. I remember the excitement when our three production boats got shipped out to Idaho. They came in just a hull and deck like they were just out of the mold. we had a blast cutting off the flanges, seaming up the halves and cutting and laying up the cockpit rim. But the real blast was paddling it, caarved like a slalom boat, surfed like a dream and carried me and camping gear all over Idaho. But now my purple Magnet rests in that big eddy in the sky I and search for a boat that can live up to it. Do they still make it? Maybe I should get another one. I borrowed Andy Bridge's personal Magnet and took if from the Dagger Composite works to a nearby lake for a quick trial. Obviously the boat is like a magnet with equal poles. Though relatively rounded, it has good initial firmness and great final stability. It accelerated, tracked, and turned well. Certainly it was a better boat than the Phoenix I was paddling at the time, even for citizen racing, where its turning and acceleration would outweigh the Phoenix' straight line cruising speed. --Gary DeBacher, Atlanta . From Bill Hay: Actually, I believe Paul Richey was working on the Magnet as early as 1989. I saw a plug for the boat on a trip to Idaho about then and actually paddled a wooden model on the Main Payette. Paul was (is?) a master craftsman and tinkered with the design for years. It had begun as a knock off of one half of a Perception boat with significant modifications to the lines and utilization of that one half as both ends of the boat. It ended up a whole new design as Paul modified everything over the years. Paul's work on the plug was absolutely beautiful to see. In 1991 I think, I paddled with Paul again in Idaho and he had a full version of the boat then. Frank Billeu was along on this trip and I recall paddling the boat on White Sand Creek. I paddled one of Andy Bridge's Blackwaters at the time (I still have one in great condition but don't paddle whitewater much any more), and Paul and I traded off for part of that trip. The Magnet was a great boat. Stable, very maneuverable, and very quick to turn. Quicker than the Blackwater, for sure, as it had a bow much less likely to catch the water (the biggest flaw in the Blackwater IMHO). This is a boat that never got the attention it deserved even though Andy Bridge got a mold. Glass boats in general, and c-boats in particular, were disappearing from the scene then. I wish I had gotten one, but stayed with the Blackwater for some reason, and later switched to a Cascade. Hope this is of interest.
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