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John, I've been following this thread... but felt compelled to toss in a few cents.
Bigger boats are genenerally considered "drier" soley because they have more volume, and that usually translates into floating higher and surfacing faster after a drop. But way, way, way more has to do with design.... things like how blunt the end of the boat is, and how the hull transitions in cross section through the bilge and up to the rails, or how deep the hull is. All these things work in combination to determine whether a boat sheds water in a certain circumstance or whether it fills with water. The same can be said for the handling characteristics in a rock garden... a 14 foot canoe with no rocker requires 14 feet of open water to to a complete spin in mirror calm water, but more than that at speed. Rolling the ends out of the water shortens this, shortening the hull shortens this, increasing the rocker shortens this. Again, the combinations start making this way more complex than simple statements.
So most of these things come down to what do you expect the canoe to do, and what do you really want to do. Back when the Rampage was made, the design perception on solo boats was to use the boats volume to make the canoe dry. So boats were bigger, loaded full of floatation and rapids were run. More rocker was added... to the point that within a few years... new whitewater hulls were 14 feet with massive amounts of rocker (like 8 inches at each end). They turned, were dry... but what the whitewater canoeing public wanted changed... So canoes became shorter, less rockered, some had edges for carving, others removed the sheer to roll better, and some were built specifically to bring paddlers into open canoeing.
So today, the Rampage is "outdated." That just means that the high-end canoeists are doing something different than the Rampage was designed for. Mad River built the boat to get people who had never run a rapid, or only paddled a tandem into a solo boat, in hopes that they might buy a Fantasy (or whate ever the next Mad River Solo would be in the future... It was the Outrage) a couple years later. So if that's what you want from a solo canoe... then there is nothing that says a Rampage is a bad boat for you. It's still going to work great. But, if your end is to surf the face off every little glassy wave, or to start creeking, you're learning curve might be shortened considerably.
Finally, an outfit OC-1 (with floatation) for $600 sounds pretty good. But as Pat pointed out... there are plenty of Rampages out there for half that. But it might cost you $300 to get a beat up boat shipped to you too, and then find out you need $50 for thighstraps, and another $100 for floatation. So, I'll leave the economics to you.
But, I suggest you try the boat. Meet the current owner, try the boat, bring a beer or two to share with him, and see what you think. Maybe a $600 Rampage is just the boat YOU need!!
PK
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