"Parallax" wrote in message


The Porta-bote really takes an hour? My god, my Nautilus 8 only takes
5 minutes to hoist off h deck with halyard and over the lifelines into
the water. Maybe 10 minutes total to be ready with oars.
Maybe I will continue o live with the Nautilus and inflatable kayak.


Seems like you are making a comparison between oranges and apples.

If you wanted to leave the Porta-bote assembled and stowed on deck then it
would deploy in a matter of minutes as well. If you are going to pack up
the inflatable and stow it below decks then I bet it would take more than 10
minutes to have it ready for launch.

How long it takes to go from the most compact storage to fully operational
will vary greatly on the style of the inflatable. I used to have an
inflatable that had and inflatable keel and plywood floor. Getting the keel
in place and the floorboards properly positioned with the
stiffening/connecting boards installed was a real bitch. I could spend
hours on it working in the driveway, I would hate to try it on the deck of a
boat.

A friend had an inflatable that had "slats" as the floorboards that just
rolled up. I didn't care for that boat at all and he ended up getting rid
of it a year later because it basically sucked. Good stiff floorboards make
a huge difference in how an inflatable planes and the roll up floors just
don't perform well.

There is a "high pressure inflatable" floor system that might be okay, but I
have never actually known anyone who has one of these.

I know several people who have Porta-botes. One friend keeps his folded up
on the dock. When he wants to use it he just lays it down (he stows it
standing up, folded thin), folds down the seats (I think that locks the
beam) puts his outboard on and he is ready to go.

At the marina where I keep my boats there is a live-aboard who has a
porta-bote that he keeps in the water all the time. I know that he has had
that boat, in the water, for the last 6 years. He puts around the marina in
it all the time, and I occasionally see him zipping down the channel at a
fairly good clip being pushed by his 6 HP outboard. His Porta-bote
outlasted my last inflatable!

I still prefer an inflatable for my own needs, but I have a lot of respect
for those Porta-botes.

Rod McInnis