Boy, what a contentious issue. Just how long does it take to erect a Porta-Bote
anyway?

In our case, it probably takes us about a half hour to do the whole job aboard
our Ericson 38. So I can well agree with folks who say from 20 to 40 min. But
in my yard at home, with the parts nearby, I can probably do the job in 5
minutes. The difference is how long it takes to get everything set up and
hauled out of storage.

If someone says they can rig their inflatable in just 5 minutes, is that 5
minutes of just pumping, or does that include getting the boat out of storage?
When are you starting the clock?

And what’s with all the insults? Just because someone else takes longer to put
his together doesn’t make him an incompetent idiot.

Someone wrote:

-Padding Cabin Top
-securing boom out of the way

To which silver tongued BinaryBill replied:

Padding what? Securing what?

Well Bill, on my two sailboats, if I didn’t put down padding on the deck or
cabin house I would leave black marks everywhere from the black tubes. You
don’t have to do this, but it helps, and it adds an extra step.

And on my older boat (a Precision 23) the only place to erect the boat was on
the cabin house over the companionway. And to do that I had to move the boom
over to one side, just like the earlier skipper. Which takes several extra
steps to release the mainsheet and such.

This other skipper also wrote:

-rigging sling and launching dinghy

To which the ever tolerant and understanding BinaryBill replied:

It weighs 50 pounds, Marc! I pick it up and drop it over the
lifelines.

From the top of my lifelines to the water is close to 7 feet on my boat, which
is further than I care to drop the boat. Which is why I too use a lifting sling
to launch the boat, which takes up another part of that 30 minutes.

BinaryBill went on to insult a few more folks, underestimate the weight of his
boat, and generally show that he is so insecure that he has to be right about
everything. But if he can do all this in "WAY under 10 minutes," then he is
obviously a superior sailor to everyone else on usenet, and we should all
recognize him as such! (Maybe then he will shut up.)

Steve Christensen