Hi Skip, good to be able to "talk" to you again.

Skip Gundlach wrote:
Dan, please share your technique for re-entry on snorkeling,...

Entering from the water:
First, take your weight belt off if you are wearing one (us fat people
find it easier to snorkel while wearing enough weight to make us
neutrally buoyant) and drop it over the side into the Bote and swim up
to the bow of the boat. Position yourself just to one side or the other
of the bow, not straight on.

Method 1: (I use this one) Reach up and over the side of the boat and
grab the black rail of the far side as far aft as you can reach with the
near hand (I board the stbd side, so facing aft, that is my right hand
grabbing the port rail). Let yourself slip back down into the water and
with a big scissor kick while pulling up, lift your chest up over the
near rail. Readjust your reach so that you are once again grabbing the
opposite rail as far aft as you can and with a little scissor kick and
pulling the far rail, slither further into the boat until you are laying
face down on the seats. Turn over and take your fins off.

Method 2: (my wife uses this one - might have something to do with
having breasts). Take one fin off while still in the water, tie a loop
into the bow line to place your foot into to use as a step and proceed
as in method one.

Note: do not pull on the near rail. This places way too much force on
the pin that holds the forward seat in place.

Do you carry yours assembled..

No, never. We do tow it a lot if we are just doing a day sail to the
next anchorage. Only once did this cause a problem when the wind and
waves got to the point where it started surfing down the waves and
taking on water when it buried its bow into the next wave. Experience
will tell you when to tow and when to recover it onto deck. This photo
shows it with the cover we made for it and how we stored it on the stbd
side of the deck, on the coachroof:
http://dsbestone.home.comcast.net/03-Cruising.jpg This worked really
well for us.

if not, how do you deal with limited flat space for assembly

1 - Remove forward stbd dorade vent cowling (if we don't, things can
catch on it).
2 - Adjust the staysail topping lift so that the top of the staysail as
it sits on the staysail boom with the cover on
(http://dsbestone.home.comcast.net/19-Chute.jpg might help you visualize
this) is at the same height as the lifelines.
3 - Untie the Bote from the strong points that it is secured to.
4 - Tie the end of the spinnaker halyard onto the balance point of the
Porta-Bote and lift it about a foot into the air.
5 - Swing it forward and around and drop it so that the bow hangs over
the port lifeline, the center of the boat sits on the staysail and leave
enough room at the stern of the Bote so that you can get past it.
6 - With one person on each side of the Bote, remove the spin. halyard,
untie the sail tie holding the boat in the folded position and unfold
the bote, placing the center seat into position. This step can be done
alone, but is much easier with two people. It is the only step in the
assembly that is significantly faster with a helper.
7 - Insert the forward and aft seats.
8 - Install the transom.
9 - Slide the bote over the stbd lifeline, aft first into the water.
This usually results in a quart or two of water getting in the boat - no
big deal.
10 - Tie the bote up along side and put the oars, gas tank and bailer
into it.
11 - Get into the boat, extend the center bails of all three seats into
position so the bottom of the hull now has a slight V shape. You can do
this before launching the bote, but it is much easier waiting until it
is in the water.
12 - Take the bote back to the outboard hoist and with one of you
working the hoist and one in the bote, lower the outboard (we use a
Mercury 4-stroke 6HP) into place.

Note that I tried to be as detailed as possible in my description. As a
result, it looks like a complicated procedure. In reality, it is
simplicity itself, requires no heavy musculature effort and about the
3rd time you do it, you find that it only takes a few minutes.

where do you stow seats/transom?

The stern and center seats stow under the bote on the coach roof.
During short passages (up to a week), the transom stows just forward of
the dodger If you look closely in this photo, you can see it up the
http://triciajean192.home.comcast.ne...2-05-04-07.JPG
The forward seat would stow on the port side of the coachroof, opposite
the Bote and just forward of the life raft. On long passages, the
transom and forward seat would be stowed inside in the quarter berth.

How's the black marking from the tubes been?

This was never a problem.

Problems we had:
- As you know, we had to have new seats made when the original ones
failed (I understand that Porta-Bote has redesigned them, but I have
never seen or used the new ones, so I can't comment on them). One was
made from Mahogany in La Paz and the other two from a local wood in El
Salvadore. All were painted white and as far as I am concerned, this is
the only way to go. Those black plastic seats would get real hot in the
tropical sun.

- The flotation foam along the inside rails deteriorated badly in the
sun. Another boat made covers for theirs and I wish we had.

- The oars that came with the boat failed (one blade broke while pulling
through some surf an the other slowly deformed into a cupped shape).
Also, the fittings on the oars rusted badly. We replaced them with
these
(http://www.westmarine.com/webapp/wcs...allpartial/0/0)
and liked them a lot even though the springs in the gizmos that make
them adjustable rusted out to nothing. We replaced the gizmos with SS
bolts and thumbscrews and had no further problems.

- Several of the pop rivets holding the oarlocks and seat brackets
failed. They were replaced with SS bolts and nuts without further problem.

- Our transom is now severely warped and I will be making a new one
before we go out again. I understand that they now ship a foam filled
plastic one. Ours is plywood with flotation foam glued to one side.

I want to stress that the problems we and others experienced are just
the sort of normal stuff that you have to deal with while cruising and
none of them were show stoppers. In our minds, the benefits of the
Porta-Bote far outweigh the problems.

Final note.
We started with a 3.5 hp 2-stroke Nissan. This worked OK, but with both
of in the bote, was kinda slow. While in Zihuatanejo, we bought the
Merc 6HP 4-stroke. At 55 lbs, this outboard is actually a couple of
pounds above the max recommended weight (53 lbs). Coupled with the fact
that I am a big guy meant that when just sitting still in the water, we
didn't have a whole lot of freeboard at the transom (when I remake it, I
think I will be able to get an inch or two more). However, we liked
this outboard so much that when it got stolen in El Salvador, we bought
another identical one the first chance we had (Costa Rica). With just
one of us, it would get up on a full plane and really fly along. With
both of plus stuff in the Bote, it almost planed and went what we felt
was plenty fast for getting around. Fast enough that we would take it
exploring up to about 5 miles away from the boat. BTW, we also added
the Davis Doel wing
(http://www.davisnet.com/marine/produ....asp?grp=m18-2)
which resulted in a noticable performance increase.