On Thu, 14 Aug 2008 21:10:05 GMT, Jere Lull wrote:

On 2008-08-14 06:33:21 -0400, said:

I know a lot of people with porta-botes, and all feel they are more or
less indestructable. I have no idea what you "heard", but I tend to
discount it based on what everyone who has one, knows about them. They
have a service lifespan that is expressed in terms of a "half-life".
I've been abusing mine for many years, and fully expect that it will
be part of my son's inheritance.

Thanks for the chuckles.

One of the fun things in the Tanzer list is to watch how many boats are
passed down to the kids or grandkids. Simple, fun, tough, and
long-lived. At 16 seasons, we're about mid-pack as far as longevity
goes amongst T28 sailors. And we consider ourselves caretakers, not
owners.

Portabotes are quite a bit younger, but I'm getting indications that
they're engendering the same sort of loyalty due to their demonstrated
capabilities. Similar to the Tanzer group, we point out obvious
shortcomings, but we fix them and go on.

There are 30+ year old Porta-Botes out there still working hard and
looking good.

We just used ours on a little mini-cruise this weekend. We explored
the many side inlets of the Mattituck Inlet. When we saw any place we
wanted to look at closer, we just dragged it up on the rocks, broken
ship pieces, rustry spikes, and broken glass. Try that with an
inflatable!