Orange blades only now - no more blue. The fiberglass shaft take-apart Carlisle Magic Plus (a.k.a. the "Simply Magic" or just plain "Magic") is still a fairly strong axe for the money, though a couple years back the blade thickness and stiffness decreased a bit. We really preferred the older ones. At this point they don't seem that much better than a Clear Blue Hawaii ("CBH") Makaha paddle for touring purposes, though the Magic shafts are rougher in texture so they have a better grip than the CBH's. The Magic shaft is also a bit stronger than the CBH shaft, though it's blades are not stronger. We won't be stocking anything but 230cm in the orange/red blade color for this particular paddle.
The 90"/230cm length seems ideal for most of our paddlers, and the blade design on the Magic lends itself equally well to both whitewater and touring. It weighs 2 pounds, 10 ounces. The glass filled plastic blades are quite similar in shape to the asymmetric spooned Cannon Wave blades in this section, and about 1 cm narrower. The RS Magics come in orange-red, and the cloud blue shown in the photo.
The fiberglass Magic shaft has a contoured grip for right hand control only, though the shaft itself is not actually ovaled like Cannons products. Lefties will need to form an oval grip as discussed in the introduction to the kayak paddle section. Magic paddles have an offset of 60 degrees when feathered. For $125 you get a medium strength, well designed unit.
