Does anyone have experience paddling a Bell Prodigy?

[Jmharrick]

I have been presented the opportunity to acquire a royalex Bell Prodigy.

Does anyone have experience paddling this canoe? Could you share your thoughts on how it paddles and the conditions you paddled it in?

Would this be a good beater whitewater boat for me to “test the waters” in solo whitewater canoeing before upgrading later?

Some pictures below:

 

[recped]

I don't have one, I have never paddled one. I only found the specs for the Prodigy X, not sure if that's what you are looking at but if not I expect the non-X would not be much different.

From the specs it look like it would be great for you intended use, it's a Bob Foote / David Yost collaboration so should be good unless they were both on drugs when they created the design!

From the pics that boat is either very dirty or it's been stored outside and exposed to a lot of UV. Can't see the bottom but if the vinyl layer is intact then the UV issue should not be a major problem.

OK, I found the specs for the non-X version, a little shorter, a little narrower, a little less rocker. I think that if you are just getting into solo ww paddling this would be a good place to start.

Price is of course a factor, if it's cheap I would grab it, the resale value of all these older Royalex boats have nowhere to go but up given the astounding price of new boats with similar specs.

 

[Jmharrick]

@recped thanks for the reply. There is definitely both dirt and some UV fading going on. I need to look at the bottom of the hull, haven’t see it in person yet. The price is right, I’m just trying to get some feedback before I find a way to make a space to store this thing.

 

[pblanc]

I paddled one once, about 1/3 of the way down the Nantahala River (Class II-III) which would amount to roughly 2 3/4 to 3 miles of whitewater. This was now quite a few years ago. It was a demo boat belonging to NOC which I had checked out to try for the day.

The reason I didn't wind up paddling it all the way down the river was that about a third of a way down I came upon a fellow sitting on the bank with an Esquif Spark looking a bit dejected. The Spark is an edgy, fast hull. I had always been curious about the Spark and asked him how he liked it. It turns out that the Spark was also an NOC boat this fellow was demoing. He said "Not much" as he had already swam several times. He had demoed the Prodigy the day before and liked it a lot better.

We were both obviously financially-responsible for returning the canoes to NOC within 4 hours. It was pretty obvious to me that this fellow was not going to be able to do that, at least not by paddling down the river. So we wound up exchanging the boats.

Truth be told, I don't remember a whole lot about the Prodigy except my impression that it was a fairly forgiving design with moderately-good downstream efficiency but nothing stellar about it jumped out. But my gut feeling is that it would probably be a fairly safe design for a beginning whitewater canoe. I liked the Spark a lot better but it took some getting used to as it was edgy, narrow, and fast. I did miss my line with it and swam at the Class III Falls but otherwise had a blast.

 

[eckilson]

I have seen a few Prodigies over the years. Little longer than and Ocoee, little wider than an Outrage, but pretty typical for a 12’ boat. As popular as Bell was with touring boats, they never really competed with Dagger or Mad River in whitewater boats. They did pick up some Dagger designs when Dagger got out of canoes – Ocoee and I guess the Prodigy. I’m sure it would be fine – I’d say go for it.

 

[Nick Pending]

@recped thanks for the reply. There is definitely both dirt and some UV fading going on. I need to look at the bottom of the hull, haven’t see it in person yet. The price is right, I’m just trying to get some feedback before I find a way to make a space to store this thing.

Jm,
I've never paddled a Prodigy, but if I didn't have a whitewater boat and wanted to try out what it was all about, if this one wasn't too expensive, I'd pick it up just to get on the water and seeit was something I like (by the way, I do). In the meantime I'd possibly keep looking for maybe something better. If/when something does, I'd decide if I wanted to "upgrade" or not, and if so, maybe sell the Prodigy, possibly for as much or more than I paid for it (or keep it around as a spare). In either case I wouldn't lose much on the deal. Seems like a win to me. Good luck with it.