Venture 17

I bought a slightly used royalex Venture this winter and used it on the Harricana and Turgeon rivers in Quebec this summer. My Venture has wood trim. We had another Venture with vinyl trim and we also had a Swift Yukon. The Venture hull is very well designed for traveling loaded. It performed quite well in whitewater and standing waves. Many times I could see the bow rise up out of a hole throwing water off to each side. This would not have happened in my 16 foot Explorer. A very dry boat indeed. However, the wood trim on my boat was considerably undersized. Especially the inner rail. Not only was it too small, the rail had been countersunk about half way through to recess the seat and thwart bolts. It was obvious there would be problems and by the end of the trip the rail showed signs of splitting at one of the holes on the rear seat. Part of that problem was due to the fact the seats ends were cut too short, allowing the seat to move sideways several inches. If the seats had fit snuggly inside the hull, I don't think the rail would have split. I hope Dagger has corrected this obvious design problem. The wind is a major problem with the high ends. The Yukon, with it's lower profile, paddled easier in strong winds but it took on more water in the rapids. All-in-all, I really like this boat when it is used as a whitewater tripping boat. I don't think it could get much better. Maybe the vinyl rails would be the best choice. The wood rails fit so tightly in the ends that they HAVE to be unscrewed to allow for hull shrinkage during winter storage. My Venture show signs of small cracks in the tip of each end because the previous owner had failed to do this. Easy to repair, though. Back to the garage now to install some better inner rails. The boat will be my number 1 tripping canoe from now on.