Thoughts on the Esquif Zephyr?

[B_Neale]

Any Zephyr owners out there? I'm curious about the durability of twin-tex.

[pblanc]

I haven't owned one, but I have heard about several that have cracked and repairs are generally not a DIY project. I also have a friend who had an Esquif Mistral tandem canoe made of Twin-tex which started to delaminate on the inside of the hull. That boat had seen only relatively light use on Class I streams.

[ncdavid]

I have one of the first ones. It developed impact marks on its second trip. Vertical stress marks right behind the paddler on the chines. Those marks gradually became more significant. After a few New River Gorge and Wilson Creek trips, I've decided not to paddle it on anything above Class 3. On the boat's last trip to Wilson Creek, I hit the stern pretty hard in a drop. A section of the boat about the size of a cooler lid indented about 6 inches. After I quick prayer I pushed the indented area out. It popped with a loud bang, but stayed intact. I really like the boat. A lot of folks hoped that Twintex would be the material of the future. Esquif has come out with lots of new whitewater designs since the Zephyr. None of them are made of Twintex.

[ezwater]

Until there is a laminating resin that will stick firmly to Twintex, without special equipment and help from a factory rep, I would not buy a Twintex boat.

I do wonder whether careful preparation and flaming might allow G-flex to adhere. I know that G-flex has failed with less aggressive prep.

The Twintex resin is polypropelene, and the fabrics are glass and polypropelene. Back in the 70s, boat builders tried polypropelene cloth to try to keep glass kayaks from splitting catastrophically, but the problem was that no resin, neither poly/vinylester nor epoxy, stuck to polypropelene fibers. You could lay the poly up because the epoxy would fit between many of the fibers, but the layup was not effective.

Esquif was counting on the strong adhesion of polypropelene resin (baked) to glass and polypropelene fibers. It works, up to a point, but any laminate will break, and then you need a repair resin that will stick properly to the boat resin and to both boat cloths.

Note that bonding of resins to Kevlar is also a bit deficient, but not to the degree of bonding to polypropelene. If we had a resin that *cut into* Kevlar the way vinylester cuts into CAP (polyester) and polypropelene cuts into polypropelene fibers, then even more durable composite boats would be possible.

[sbroam]

I like mine a lot, but treat it like a glass boat. Plumbers Goop has worked for thigh straps, might do for a repair.

[Lappie]

There is 3 or 4 up here and they seem to hold up pretty well, in our really rocky rivers... In fact, I paddled a demo a few time and really gave it a goos work out and that was at least 4 years ago and I think it is still going strong!!

But I don't think I would buy one just because up here there is no way of getting them fixed with out sending the boat out... and that Cost a lot of $$$.

Cheers
David

[cheajack]

I had one that I took to Eli's Dad for "factory authorized" repairs. At that time his yard was full of Zephyrs waiting for Esquif to get him the Twintex mat to do the repairs. All or nearly all were cracked in the same place, in both rear chines about half way between the saddle and the stern. In another but similar thread I raised the question that could it be possible that during forming of the hull, energy was stored in this area like a spring and that even light hits added enough energy to cause the cracks thus relaxing the tension in the hull. I was with Kevin Kelly on the New when his cracked from a very light rock hit. The noise from the impact/crack could be heard all across the river, further "evidence" to me that the forming process loaded that area of the boat and predisposed all of them to crack. It is my understanding that newer Zephyrs have additional mat added to the stern chines and the problem has been minimized.