Do you have humorous stories about inflatable boat problems ?

Question

Do you have humorous stories about inflatable boat problems ?

Answer 1

We sailed our boat from California to Australia, stopping at many islands in the South Pacific. We had with us a tiny inflatable dinghy with a tinier outboard attached. We could only go about 0.5 knots full throttle. When we got to Fiji, we saw for sale a beautiful 20 horsepower outboard, which is roughly 10 times the power capacity of our dinghy. We made sufficient reinforcements, i.e. put a giant piece of wood in the floor to stiffen the boat, and tried to scootch forward when undergoing sea trials with the new motor. We discovered, when the outboard had any gas at all, the dinghy immediately jumped up at an alarming angle, where the bow was up at a 70 degree angle. So we were basically blind at low speeds. To counteract this problem, we could gun the engine and immediately jump up on step and this would get the bow down. Unfortunately, in this position we would be completely unable to steer, yet would be moving forward at over 30 knots. It was like riding a rocket-propelled grenade. The best we could hope for, when leaving the harbor to go to the anchorage, would be to gun the engine, jump to the bow, and hope nothing would be in our way. We eventually got a different dinghy with a hard bottom, which made dinghy riding less bracing.

Answer 2

yeah

a friend bought one of those cheap $29.00 rafts, took it home and blew it up and left it sitting in the hot sun.

A bit later he heard a big KABLAM!! and when he went outside the thing had exploded into a kabillion peices.

So, of course the next day at work there was an ad on the bulletin board saying "for sale, used rubber raft, some assembly required" and the guys name.

He didnt really see the humor in it.

Last summer my boys bought one of those cheap rafts and took it down tha Alberton Gorge, which is big time white water, class 4's in places near here.

When they got to the biggest waves, at Tumbleweed and Fang rapids they all got thrown out but had a great time.

So, they walked it back up around and went through the rapids several times, there were pictures posted on the internet by a professional photographer of 6 big guys being pitched out of this little yellow rubber boat right at the top of a huge wave.

They spent more in the water than in the raft, had a great afternoon.