Cheap inflatable

Hi all

Just wondering if anyone has any experience with these www.anacondastores.com/water/boats

We have a few hours mooring down the river in Eggs and Bacon Bay (sandy shore) and instead of towing the tender down there i just want something i can store on the boat and blow it up if we want to go ashore (approx 100 meters) or over to another boat

Any thoughts would be appreciated

Regards Don

Hi HG

There are quite a lot of unused moorings around here (probably 7 or 8 here in the bay at home) and as long as they are registered and you pay the $70 registration fee every year everyone seems happy

When you get her going HG if you come down here you are welcome to use my mooring in Eggs and Bacon and my mate has a spare one here at Port Huon you could use if you didn't want to anchor or go into the marina

I know the cheapie inflatable won't last forever but it will be light and won't take up much space on the boat

Regards Don

Select to expand quote

nswsailor said..
Anaconda aren't cheap Donk, you may get a better deal elsewhere

Hi Newsailor

Thanks for that

I haven't had a look around the shops yet jut a quick look on the net to see what is available

Regards Don

Having a small TS I haved used the cheap inflatables over the years. Eventually i succumbed to my ego and upgraded to a real one. apart from being a lot heavier and bulky i found it probably quicker to inflate due to higher quality pump etc. Of course the quality and performance are not comparable. So worth thinking about.

Select to expand quote

Madmouse said..
Having a small TS I haved used the cheap inflatables over the years. Eventually i succumbed to my ego and upgraded to a real one. apart from being a lot heavier and bulky i found it probably quicker to inflate due to higher quality pump etc. Of course the quality and performance are not comparable. So worth thinking about.

Hi Madmouse

I appreciate what you're saying

I had a 3.1 meter Achilles hypalon inflatable for about 20 years so I know what a decent one is like but as you say the tradeoff is weight and bulk and I hope the light weight cheapie will do what I need it to down at Eggs and Bacon

Regards Don

Select to expand quote

cisco said..

Donk107 said..

There is only one place I would use a thing like that and that is in a swimming pool.

Hi Cisco

I understand what you are saying and agree with you to some extent

I am just looking for something i can get from the boat to the shore in or from boat to boat when the weather is kind in Eggs and Bacon which is quite shallow and reasonably protected

If the wind was blowing into the bay i wouldn't bother going ashore as it would be to hard to make it back to the boat from the shore

The problem i see is that nowdays all of the decent inflatables have a solid transom (unlike your Avon) which makes for a bulky heavy package when deflated and i don't want to have to keep it inflated on the fore deck

This is what we are talking about on a good day (it is not the southern ocean)

Regards Don



I reckon my mooring is approx where the dark hulled yacht is so it is in a fairly sheltered position in the bay

Hi Manitulak

Thanks for that

I had a look at the website but they are all solid transom and would make a fairly bulky package when deflated
'
Regards Don

I agree with Cisco re the Zodiacs, quality is great, but they are heavy. I struggle to bother dragging the inflatable out of the locker for much less than a week on the boat.

I have always liked the idea of these.

http://walkerbay.com.au/69/kayaks/airis-tandem-inflatable-kayak or these

ozinflatablekayaks.com.au/inflatable-watercraft/lagoon-2-inflatable-kayak/.

They are light, so not to much effort to use for a week end. They also look like you would have half a chance of making progress into some breeze and chop.

They are expensive though... so and are on the "when money is available" list.

An inflatable SUP might be the answer

Hi Donk,

I had that exact same model of inflatable which I used as a tender for my boat for about 2 years. I found it to be pretty handy as it could be folded up and stored in a neat box in the garage or packed in the car when we went camping. I got pretty fed up with inflating it every time I wanted to go out to the boat, but for occasional use it would probably be OK. It was nice and stable and with a good pair of 6ft wooden oars it rowed OK.

I might get another one at some point in the future so that I can take a tender out to the islands off the coast of Perth when I visit.

There are two reasons I don't use it as a tender any more: 1. I hated having to inflate/deflate the damn thing every time I went to the boat, so now have a solid tender that I store on a trolley in the shed at the club where my mooring is. 2. Coming ashore one day I dragged it over the wall and it caught on some jagged rocks and ripped a 15 cm, un-repairable gash in the bottom. Its so light I should have just picked it up and carried it. So, if you expect it to take a knock or two beware - its not as tough as others, and pretty hard to patch if you do puncture it.

Mike

Hi Microbe

Thanks for your information

The boat is normally on our mooring at Port Huon and i have a alloy dinghy to use there but when we sail down to Eggs and Bacon to our other mooring i don't really want to tow the alloy dinghy behind so the cheap inflatable would probably only get used 6 or so times a year (if we only went down for the day we probably would not bother going ashore) so oit is hard to justify spending a lot of money on a better quality boat that would be heavier and take up more space when packed away

The shore down there is sandy so it should be fairly kind to the bottom of the inflatable

Regards Don

hey Donk , check out ebay for the $600 delivered , inflatables,[ sea wizard ?] not sure, they may still be there ........... not bad !!

Watching Robson Green Extreme Fishing a few seasons ago and he was fishing out of a Kick boat. Never could understand why we don't have them in Australia. I have been tempted to modify an old $20 inflatable to do the same.