Submitted: 09-04-2008 by sosborne
I own the fiberglass layup of this boat bought it last season and spent due to the fact that most of the time I could not convince my family to come canoeing with me in my tripper which tended to be a little hard to handle on my own especially in a wind. I spent the summer doing solo back country trips with it logged just over 600km of paddling and portages according to the gps most of it lake travel.
It's certainly a gear hauler and prefers a full load especially in the wind tracks well and and the speed is good turning however seems to be a small issue leaning it certainly helps but secondary stability feels a little loose especially in the wind and waves definitely not a white water boat but handles Class 2 without feeling like a loose canon. took me a while to get used to the hull shape for packing soft sided packs work much better than barrels in this boat. the tripper seems to be almost designed to hall 5 gallon pails and barrels, not so much with the solitude.
The layup, at first I thought felt a little flimsy and have always hated the ribs in the clipper's fiberglass layup but after a year of use and a few (well maybe more than a few) hard knocks and undeserved abuse the hull has stood up exceptionally well. |