C-Forum

I wonder if anyone has any experience racing a Wenonah canoe using the Kevlar ultra-lite layup, particularly in rocky rivers.

I came across an ad on Craigslist for a Sundowner with this layup. The Royalex Sundowner is the boat of choice for tandem downriver racers. It's fast, tough, and light for a boat that meets the ACA Recreation-class specs.

The Kevlar Sundowner would meet the length and width requirements for a Rec boat, but is too light to qualify. As a Racing-class boat, the Sundowner would seem to be short (only 17'). I also wonder if the ultra-lite layup would be able to handle rocky rivers.

Anyone have any thoughts?

I would think Ultra=/=rocks

Not being sarcastic, but how many rocks are you going to hit, and do you mind occasional patching?

We raced our wildwater C2s down numerous rivers where we had some hard hits. We trained for Garmisch (Germany) by paddling Section 4 of the Chattooga down to Camp Creek, and the Tellico below Jarod's Knee, and neither were as rough on the boat as the Loisach River that the race was on that year. Sometimes we hit something and had to patch, and sometimes we did not have to patch. I can pretty much guarantee you that our wildwater boat was not any tougher than an an ultra-lite Wenonah. But you also got pretty good at precise paddling.

The flex-core Kevlar Wenonah's are durable - my father inlaw has a Kevlar Kingfisher that he uses on all sorts of rivers, and it is all dinged up, but has never required a patch. I don't have any experience with the ultra-lite Wenonah's and impacts.

Glass/kevlar boats in general are much tougher than people think.

I was amazed first time I paddled the Loisach (1994?), we found it fairly slow going in plastic river runners (I had a corsica S, can't remember about the others) picking our way down narrow twisty routes between the massive boulders, then there was a shout from behind to move over and 20 or more kids in composite WWR K1s paddled past us weaving around the boulders without touching a single one.... It was slightly humbling!