The Mainship we bought came with an old Caribe inflatable and an equally old
(1996) Honda 15 horse 4 stroke. Both are carried on the forward deck of the
Mainship on a cradle.

I finally got around to inspecting and trying the hoist system (which works
great), but discovered the inflatable was in really rough shape. It needs to
be pumped up every 2 or 3 days and had a bunch of patches on it. The Honda
engine weighs a ton, and although the previous owner said it ran fine, I
decided to replace both with new.

I gave the old setup away to one of the employees here at Kingman. He said
he'd love to mess around with them.

I searched all the manufactures of rigid hull inflatables and finally bought
on at ... of all places .... West Marine.
They had a deal going on whereby if you bought both an inflatable and an
engine, they had a decent discount on the package.

Even though the 10' inflatable (made by Zodiac) is rated for a 15 hp engine,
I went for a 6 hp Mercury 4 stroke. When I was at West Marine, another
customer saw me looking at the boat and commented that he has had the same
one for 3 years now and loves it. I asked him what engine he had, and he
said a 9.9hp Merc 4 stroke. He also said that if he were to do it again,
he'd go smaller on the engine. That confirmed what I was thinking. At my
stage in life, the benefits of a 55 lb engine over a 100 lb + engine is far
more important than speed.

Anyway, got back to the boat a couple of hours ago, launched the boat,
installed the motor, filled it with oil, bought 3 gallons of gas and took a
little ride. Lots of fun, 'cept the thunderstorms and tornado warnings.

Eisboch