My last trip to the BW was in an Old Town Loon 13-8 kayak.  That's a small boat, but it carried enough to live comfortably for 10 days.  This winter I am planning to buy a solo canoe.  The one that has caught my eye so far is the Wenonah Prism.  Any one have experience with this or other solo canoes?

Prism is a good, popular choice.  You could say it was designed for BWCA - a "lake boat"- its offered frequently by the outfitters and is noted to be relatively stable.  One advantage with Wenonah, is that they offer a cheaper layup if you are buying new and not looking for a $3000 boat.  Prism layups: 49# = $1,450   44# = $2,050  or 34# = $2,350.

You will get lots of suggestions of people's faforite boats, and some people will like boat X better than boat Y, and others will be just the opposite.

What boat to get depends a lot on how much effort you want to put into getting one - will you drive 500 miles to test one, or to buy one?  willing to pay a couple hundred bucks or so more extra,  and take the risks associated with shipping a canoe to you?  There are a lot of suitable canoes, but not all are readily available - Clipper, for instance is a Canadian west coast boat maker with minimal US presence.  Hemlock Canoes is an East Coast  (NY) maker with no distribution network - you buy at his boat shop or get a boat shipped, as another example.

normally, you are better off buying locally, either new or used.  so step 1 should probably be a search of your area to find the nearest canoe dealers, and see what brands are available.  then look at those manufacturers websites and look at thier "how to choose a canoe" writeups, if they have one - generally, they will group thier boats into categories - "tripping", "river running" etc - that should give you a good idea of what lake tripping boats you have more or less readily available.

if you are in MN, you have lots of options from Wenonah, and some from Bell may still be available, and Souris River as well has some presence there.  lots of BWCA outfitters sell off some of thier rental fleet in the off season, and you may find some deal prices on used boats from them.

Craigslist is a good option for used boats - and looking at the Paddling.Net classifieds is another good source.

Form follows function - a boat designed for solo paddling on lakes is going to be more or less the same, no matter who manufacures it - say 90%; the remaining 10% is where the differences are, and why some people like X more than Y. But they will all work.

Popular alternatives for BWCA boats include the Bell Magic - likely hard to find new since Bell has ceased production a year or two ago, but could be found if you do some googling.   I'd guess that something like 80% of the solo boats on BWCA are Prisms or Magics.   Part of the reason is thier length - speed (and more or less efficiency) are more or less related to the ratio of length to width.  Long and sleek is gonna be faster than short and stout, and that's why those two 16 footers are popular.  But length comes at a price - longer is faster, but harder to turn - like the Wen Voyager ar 17 1/2 foot -  shorter like thier 14' Vagabond will be more manouverable, but slower and easier to bog down with a big load.  If you are a heavyweight, the Wen Wilderness or Bell Rockstar might be better choices.

Personally, I have two lake tripping solo boats - a Mad River Independence - no longer made by Mad River, but available from Vermont Canoe and a Bell Merlin II - both of wihch I have used in Quetico.  at 15'8" and 15', they are a bit shorter, lighter in the case of the 29# Merlin, and more manouverable than either the Prism or Magic, reflecting my personal preferences, but about as fast.  I can recommend both of those boats.

whatever boat you wind up with, most likely won't be your last.  if you buy a prism and later on want something sportier, you can always sell the prism and buy something else, and consider the diff between your purchase and selling price as a rental fee.

do a search on here for "solo canoe" - expand the search parameters first, and you'll find many threads with the same topic - it comes up a couple of times a year at least

or just cruise thru the forum pages for topics with that haedline

Prism, love it for flatwater
280 lbs and 5-7 day solo trips

why don't more use a cover?  It's not worth the hassle to most.  But you can easily outfit yours for one if so moved.

Spray-decks are great, but a luxury.  They can cost as much as the canoe.  Extra weight to portage.

I have  had my Prism for about 20 years and have never regretted getting it. When you load it down the stability increases because of what the maker calls the shallow arch design. There are faster canoes but stability is important to me. I am 190 pounds and often start a long trip with packs totaling 170 pounds, the Prism handles it fine. I also like the width of the Prism, no prying bulky packs out of a skinny canoe.