portaboat

[xort]

I want to run fairly long distances with my dink, planning on going fishing & snorkeling in places that might be several miles from the mothership.
I see that the portaboat will plane with a 4hp engine. Is that with 2 people & gear? How fast can it run in moderate conditions, less than 1' chop, with 2 people plus gear?

[Valiente]

I haven't had the one I bought from Killarney Sailor out yet, but my impression is that the limitation is a weight limitation on the transom of circa 55 pounds. Some 4 HP four-strokes are below that now, and it's conceivable that a 5 HP of 50 lbs. is here or "in the works".

I would say that weight limit plus your prop design, plus the way you distribute weight (a 160 lb. man and a 110 lb. woman, or two typical Americans?) in the Portabote is going to determine whether you can plane or not.

In my Zodiac 310 RIB, I could plane with a Doel fin on my Honda 9.9 4-stroke (about 110 lbs. of engine, as it was a long-shaft) only by leaning far forward when alone, but my Mercury 9.9 two-stroke with NO Doel fin (about 70 lbs. and short shaft) got me on the plane effortlessly and could do so with only slightly more delay with my small wife and smaller son in the bow. My point is that on a transom-weight sensitive craft, little things appear to make a difference: a full 5 gallon gas tank on the Zodiac put me on the plane faster than the 3 gallon Honda tank I preferred to use for space and convenience reasons, because the extra "ballast forward" kept the whole thing more horizontal.

Hope this helps.

[sailingdog]

It'd probably do fairly well. I haven't really had the GPS out to measure the speed... but next season I'll have to measure the speed and such with my handheld GPS.

Originally Posted by xort

I want to run fairly long distances with my dink, planning on going fishing & snorkeling in places that might be several miles from the mothership.
I see that the portaboat will plane with a 4hp engine. Is that with 2 people & gear? How fast can it run in moderate conditions, less than 1' chop, with 2 people plus gear?

[erps]

We went to the boat show in Seattle today and looked at the lightweight AB Inflatable and the Portabote. I've been sitting on the fence for a few months now trying to decide which way to go between these two boats. Although the Portabote is ugly as sin, I have been thinking it would be the way to go for us. The lemming effect was making me second guess myself though. When I would see pictures of all the tenders on the beach during the Baha Ha Ha they would all be inflatable boats. What do these people know that I don't know? Well, I've never been one to follow the crowd anyway.

In the end we went with the Portabote. I figure it will be tougher, hold up better against the sun and the elements, it should be a lot easier to stow on deck, it should require a smaller motor to push it around and I understand they row decently. I'll save money on the up front purchase cost, save money by using a smaller outboard and save money by not having to worry about davits. Time will tell.

[sailingdog]

Erps-

They do row fairly well. My late wife used to row the 12' 6" portabote she bought me for fishing around some of the lakes down in Virginia.. Took her a while to not row in giant circles though... I often had three people in the boat and would row it to different fishing spots on Burke Lake, even in fairly high winds, it was pretty easy to do. With the 3.5 hp Tohatsu... it moves quite nicely.

One caveat—the plastic transom and seats are really a weak point. I know most people have replaced theirs with ones made out of marine ply and fiberglassed over them. Fortunately, mine came with a wooden transom, not the plastic one they're using nowadays. The plastic used for the benches and the transom seems to get fairly brittle after prolonged UV exposure, which doesn't bother the hull. This summer, I'll be fiberglassing the transom plate on my boat, as well as building new benches to match. They may have fixed this problem, but if they have, I haven't heard about it.

[Valiente]

Originally Posted by erps

In the end we went with the Portabote. I figure it will be tougher, hold up better against the sun and the elements, it should be a lot easier to stow on deck, it should require a smaller motor to push it around and I understand they row decently. I'll save money on the up front purchase cost, save money by using a smaller outboard and save money by not having to worry about davits. Time will tell.

I ordered a Honda 2 HP to push the Portabote I bought from Killarney Sailor. I also have a nesting dinghy with a sail kit. Both are rowable and both are well under 100 lbs. in weight; the Honda is the short shaft version and is 28 lbs., something my five-foot tall wife can lift one-handed (part of the attraction).

I already own a Zodiac 310 RIB, but difficulties with davits and hauling it on deck, not to mention real issues in keeping control of the 9.9 HP four stroke in a seaway, convinced me that two lighter, more compact tenders with a smaller engine ultimately made more sense, as it means we can both be away from the boat, or at staggered times, and we can load the tenders separately for safety or just weight distribution.

We anticipate that the nesting dinghy, being easily rowed, will be primarily "the people mover" to and from shore, and that the Portabote (being inherently more durable, or rather, we won't care so much if we spill stuff in it or get a few dings in it, would be the "cargo hauler" and would likely have the 2HP on it.

The 2HP is actually light enough to throw over a shoulder until one can locate a shoreside locker or some safe place for stowage: a nice alternative to having one's outboard stolen.

If we turn out to be wrong about all this, it is very easy to find an inflatable in paradise: Just buy one stolen from another cruiser who thought a painter off the stern was secure.

As for "following the pack", the pack includes a horde of SUVs driven by single-occupant soccer moms going 6 blocks to the video store, a behaviour wrong on so many levels that it is an exemplar of why to be suspicious of "the pack".

This spring, we'll be real-life testing the assembly and deployment times of the nesting dinghy and the Portabote with and without the engine, passengers, sail-kit, etc., and will report here and in my blog.

For the record, if I was just going to the Caribbean for a few years, I would probably stick with the RIB/9.9 combo, but we are going a little farther afield and having a sailing dinghy aboard in places that don't have a string of Hobie rental shacks on the beach will give my young son a nice anchorage activity: sailing from boat to boat looking for cruising kids.

[erps]

They do row fairly well. My late wife used to row the 12' 6" portabote she bought me for fishing around some of the lakes down in Virginia.. Took her a while to not row in giant circles though...

I had the same problem. Then I saw that other people were using two oars. I'm going with the pack on that one.

[Valiente]

So that's what they mean by "not having both your oars in the water".

This sort of thing never happens in a canoe, of course.

[sailingdog]

Her problem was that her dominant side was a good deal stronger than her weak side.... so she tended to row in circles. Also, she'd keep looking over her shoulder to figure out where she wanted to go, and that would make it even worse....

[Valiente]

I shouldn't laugh, but that's somewhat of a comical image, SD.