C-Forum

Looking to outfit Fantasy as a Tandem for me 180 and my son (11yr old). Is this boat too small at 13' to do a tandem? How does it handle in general if we were to do class II or class III rapids (stability)....How old school of a style of hull is this?
-thanks in advance!

I think that particular hull is small to use as a tandem, but right now, the two of you can probably have lots of wet fun. And he can man the pump.

"Old School" and "planing/displacement" are non-issues with ww open canoes. Those are silly kayaker issues. Some of the earliest ww hulls like the Sunburst may be a bit round and indefinite, but what I've seen of the Fantasy suggests that it has acceptably sharp handling.

I solo a Mad River Synergy, a very asymmetrical 15' canoe designed as a tandem. I think it must have been designed for smallish tandem teams, because when my wife joins me for a 360 pound total load, the ride is rather "wet". For tandem, we would have been better off with a Caption, but for solo the Synergy is better.

I think it is too small for a tandem as well. The Fantasy had something of a reputation of being a wet boat for a larger solo paddler back when. Of course, that was when everyone was paddling boats 4 meters and longer solo.

The Fantasy was one of Mad River's earlier solo whitewater boats. They produced John Berry's Flashback for about 5 years and a deeper version of it (the Flashback II) for a single year. They dropped the Flashback line when the Fantasy came out in 1991. In the later 1980s MRC also produced Berry's ME.