How many different Preludes?

Kelvin · Post by **Kelvin** » Sun Jan 30, 2011 9:17 pm

Hi Folks,

I have now seen three different Preludes, my mates is a Savage one with a very flat bottom, it's made of a triple layer plastic. My 'new' boat is an old Pyranha one flattish bottom triple layer plastic, very shallow. And another friend has a Pyranha one single layer plastic quite rounded bottom, way deeper than mine.

How many different Preludes where made and which one is the Esquif one the closest to?

Kelvin.

wetnobby · Post by **wetnobby** » Sun Jan 30, 2011 10:16 pm

Kelvin,
Dont know the early history of Preludes but the Esquife boats (Prelude & Fly) are made in the moulds that they bought from Pyranha a couple of years ago.
There is no doubt that hull flatness etc can be affected by the cooling jigs and process.
I was not aware that they had been made in anything other than HDPE but if they have it would have been "corelight" as per below...

http://www.venturecanoes.com/page.php?Page=71

Chris

TheKrikkitWars · Post by **TheKrikkitWars** » Sun Jan 30, 2011 11:15 pm

wetnobby wrote:I was not aware that they had been made in anything other than HDPE but if they have it would have been "corelight" as per below...

http://www.venturecanoes.com/page.php?Page=71

Indeed, I believe that my boat is the one Kelvin is talking about with the dead flat hull, and It is made from whatever the 90's equivalent of corelight is... I don't know with any certainty that my boat is a Sauvage, but it's advanced age, colourway, unusually flat hull & lack of pyranha decals leads me to suspect that's the case.

The corelight material has a problem... when I took the broken gunnels off I discovered that most of the rivets had been popped inside the foam connective layer rather than going through the hull entirely; Result, I've had to carefully cut most of the rivets out with a 1/8" woodchisel, rather than being able to knock them out with a punch; several which were slightly loose rotated when I drilled them out and caused damage to the core. However, in terms of dealing with boating abuse, It's proved to be as good as HDPE, if not slightly better.

Kelvin, How're you finding the prelude? And thanks again for the ash I've got it clamped on one side awaiting screws... Looks very pretty.

RodeoClown · Post by **RodeoClown** » Sun Jan 30, 2011 11:42 pm

TheKrikkitWars wrote:I don't know with any certainty that my boat is a Sauvage, but it's advanced age, colourway, unusually flat hull & lack of pyranha decals leads me to suspect that's the case.

Probably a Mobile Adventures boat. I found this from Eli's archive ( http://home.rmci.net/phelbert/eliarchive.html)

Mobile Adventure, LTD was Europe's original Dagger importer. They are based in Leicester, England. Once Dagger started dealing with other countries individually...Mobile Adventures started building their own canoes. Colin, (the head of Mobile Adventures), has a complete line of recreational canoes. He makes tandem ABS boats called the Symphony and the Melody, he has smaller boats called the Minuet and Merengue. We are redesigning the Superfly and selling him the design. We want to call it the Waltz. It will only be available in Europe...except for the ones for us. We are also going to design a more versatile version of the Superfly to take care of the people like Dad...people who need the bigger boats, but would enjoy a happy medium.

I always wondered what it was a Prelude to.
I'm sure Eli or James W. can tell more.

tennOC · Post by **tennOC** » Mon Jan 31, 2011 1:22 am

The original Preludes were linear PE in a "triple dump" process by Ace (yup the folks who made the Ace rafting helmets years ago). The 1st mold was fiberglass and suffered a little bruise or two during demolding. The boats have a little kiss on one end. Long story short they didn't hold up and the original owner of both designs sold them to Pyrahna. So there are at least 3 versions of it.

As far as the name, you'll notice in RodeoClown's post the name of some of Colin's other canoes- they all have a musical theme to them. There were many more in Mobile Adventure's fleet, all with musical names. At one time there was to be one more design come out of my shop besides the Spanish Fly and Prelude and that was a tandem canoe to be named the "Tango". I starved out and had to go back to a "real" job (self-employed carpenter) before we could pull that one off. Frankie went on to Germany to work with Robson (Robert had bought the old Savage oven and Frankie and Psyco went over and set it up).

But we'd kept the dream alive and it was good to be involved.

Lappie · Post by **Lappie** » Mon Jan 31, 2011 4:52 am

So tennOC, when are you geting into it and making that "Tango"???
I would love to have the know ledge of building boats, I would sure give it a try!!

wetnobby · Post by **wetnobby** » Mon Jan 31, 2011 7:42 am

Thats right, the ACE triple dump is the Corelight process.
AC are still in business, they still make some helmets and still manufacture all of Pyranha's open canoes along with moulding all of the Big Dog range of boats.

iRolled · Post by **iRolled** » Mon Jan 31, 2011 8:08 pm

I was recently at Bailey Johnson's. He was kind enough to let me browse through warehouse No. 2. We went out to this old barn. Climbed up to the second floor and shabam, boats everywhere. In the rafters, on the floor, on the walls. they were every where. Even saw a pile of Dagger saddles laying in the corner. Anyhow, he had 7 or 8 preludes there. Two of em were from overseas, AC I guess. some were Pirahna, and there may have been an esquif. He gave me the Lowdown on the differences from one manufacturer to the other. One of the preludes was a Purple with tiny gray poka-dots. I was a pretty cool looking boat. Brand new even. He said it wasn't worth a darn though. I guess they had a major issue with these. One boat had several cracks that it had gotten on it's maiden voyage, and the cracks came from hitting minor rocks.

I just thought it was cool to see so many of the same boats from different manufacturers at one place. I just thought I'd throw that out there, and share what I saw.

Craig Smerda · Post by **Craig Smerda** » Mon Jan 31, 2011 8:32 pm

iRolled wrote:I was recently at Bailey Johnson's. He was kind enough to let me browse through warehouse No. 2. We went out to this old barn. Climbed up to the second floor and shabam, boats everywhere. In the rafters, on the floor, on the walls. they were every where. Even saw a pile of Dagger saddles laying in the corner. Anyhow, he had 7 or 8 preludes there. Two of em were from overseas, AC I guess. some were Pirahna, and there may have been an esquif. He gave me the Lowdown on the differences from one manufacturer to the other. One of the preludes was a Purple with tiny gray poka-dots. I was a pretty cool looking boat. Brand new even. He said it wasn't worth a darn though. I guess they had a major issue with these. One boat had several cracks that it had gotten on it's maiden voyage, and the cracks came from hitting minor rocks.

I just thought it was cool to see so many of the same boats from different manufacturers at one place. I just thought I'd throw that out there, and share what I saw.

I think Bailey's barn is haunted... like a cemetary.

from
http://www.cboats.net/cforum/viewtopic.php?t=7961107

biggreenjefe wrote:The only boat on the list I had was the Phantom. Bailey Johnson tried to talk me out of buying it. God was he right. What a turd! My apologies to its fans, but as a boat for running tougher runs it just didn't cut it. The bow did come up fast. Was terribly unstable full of water. And without the hard chines, just didn't have the performance I was used to.

Truth be told I did have a Prelude for a day. Had one of Frankie's Mobile Adventure Preludes. Drove 16 hrs to Tenn. from Tx. Bailey had picked me one up in Knoxville. Spent the next day outfitting it in Baileys shop. The next day we hooked up with Dooley and ran the Pigeon Dries @ about 1000 cfs. A fairly beefy level they said. Bailey thought I was nuts to run my first time in that boat on that run at that level. Long story short. The hull was so crappy that I knocked 7 holes in it during the course of the run (before the end of the run). I was soooo bummed and and disappointed that I couldn't even enjoy the run. The boat was edgy but cool, and I just didn't even care. I was thinking f**k... $700+ down the drain. And that's what it was. It's still in Bailey's barn. One day I'm going to turn it into a planter. A red $700+ planter. And I WILL have good thoughts of Frankie.

I've a feeling a few of those might be Dooley's too... but I'm not certain.

I believe this is a M/A-Sauvage Prelude Dooley is paddling on the Pigeon Dries at around 0:56
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJkY_IHPKW8

iRolled · Post by **iRolled** » Mon Jan 31, 2011 8:54 pm

Craig, that's the same story Bailey told me. And yes most of those are Dooley, and Charley's boats.