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Anyone paddle the Esquif Raven? Reviews?

I'm also really curious to see any reviews from folks who actually paddled it...

Feels to me like a nitro with the problematic double angled bottom corrected. All the nitro-deto-blast have this design that wears off so fast.

I feel that a good 11 feeter is what's badly missing at esquif. I don't like either paradigm zephyr nitro...

I like ocoee and prodigy but just like MR, bell has poor royalex these days... If I would have to buy something it would be viper11 or sequel I guess; both good boats as well.

There is a review of the Raven in the current Rapid magazine.

Gotta agree with the poor royalex quality, I took my new Outrage on it's first paddling weekend n some class 3-4 rivers, had good lines almost everywhere, only hae a few minor incidents of hitting rocks that wouldn't have hurt a boat from the early 90's at all, but this one already looks like it's been through hades. Great boat, but man the material sure sucks. My next big OC will be composite.

TGG!

They all seem to be pretty bad these days.

The vinyl layer in front of my wife's seat in her Bell Ocoee is so thin that she worn it off bailing with a sawed-off plastic tide container. I've painted it once. Now that it's bare again, I may put a layer of raft vinyl down on it.

I wonder how the Royalex on the Esquif boats like the Raven and Zoom is? It seemed they were using a thicker sheet than most a few years back.

It's a very different feel from a Nitro.

Bottom is soft chine, there is shouldered tumblehome but nothing down low like the Det/ Nitro/ Blast series. Think round not chined.

Stability is solid, you can lean 20+ degrees and the boat just keeps getting firmer. It's perfect for instructors who want to demonstrate exaggerated moves, or for paddlers who don't want to swim. However it won't grab chines for edgy moves, it could care less about angle of boat to water.

I haven't paddled an Outrage for years, so can't really compare there. We're going to take the Raven, my Nitro, a Prodigy X and whatever else has interest down the Upper Colorado in a couple weeks (Pumphouse to Rancho Del Rio) to switch between boats so I'll have more direct comparisons after that.

General comment on Royalex:

The sheeting needs to cure a year or so after being molded to reach full hardness. Old school boats will hold up better because they're cured. A brand new fresh off the mold boat is still soft for that year, and any abuse will show.

It's been this way for a long time. However paddlers evolve. When you first bought your old boats new, were you putting them through the same abuse you're running now? Probably not. A boat doesn't see hard impacts in class II, and paddlers learning curves give the boat time to cure out before they expose the boat to harder impacts.

Best way to avoid problems. Look at the HIN. Last two digits are the year the boat was built. An 09 is going to be softer than an 08 or 07. Check the HIN, if you order a boat odds are you're stuck with a new hull, but if looking on the dealers rack try to find one that has already cured out. We prefer to bring ours in late summer so they can cure out over the winter to avoid soft boat problems.

The curing may be part of the problem, but the main culprit is the material thickness. I recently compared the sheet thickness of my Outtrage and my friends Bell Ocoee to his Dagger Genesis that was probably built when dinosaurs still roamed the earth. The difference in sheet thickness between the Outrage and the Ocoee and the Genesis is unbelievable. The Geneis is really heavy compared to the two other boats, but I'll take a more durable boat any day.
My next traditional open boat will most likely be glass.

TGG!

Yes the new material is way thinner.

I would be curious to compare thickness of esquif boats these days, as opposed to others. I beleive Esquif is making its own Royalex but I am not sure...

By the way the inner layer is foam, not vinyl. Vinyl is outside layer, usually even thinner but vinyl is both tough and heavy material.

I've heard that putting your new boat in the sun for sometime helps curing the royalex. Not sure about that either.

All royalex comes from the same place.

JK

kaz wrote:All royalex comes from the same place.

JK

and it's not the "old" royalex either... remember... we're trying to save the planet and the EPA got their way with Uniroyal/Spartec. (the old style outer poly skin on r/x had some "bad" stuff in it that made it far more durable... good for mother earth... bad for boaters)

eric is also correct... "curing" really helps if folks are willing to wait around to use the boat

this is the world we're living in... http://www.mv.com/users/morris/paddling ... stics.html

The weight of the Esquif RX boats is similar to the Mad River or Mohawk ones for a boat of similar size, so the odds that the material is any better is unlikely, particularly considering it's all coming from the same supplier.

TGG!

So what was that old thread about bell and MR having switched on another (chinese?) manufacturer?

Can't find this back but can swear I saw it not so long ago...

If it's a question of trademark or patent you can bet chinese won't ever care anyways.

Nevermind: sorry just found back the old message it was about composite boats from confluence to be mada in china. not royalex.