Air Floor or Rigid Inflatable

Flyer · Posted: Mon Jun 11, 2007 11:05 am Post subject:

We have the Merc Air Floor and it has been a very good boat for our purposes.
It stows easily in the cockpit and will run a little more then 20mph with a 15hp Johnson with a big eared 4 bladed prop.

The only difficult thing with an air floor is the pressure of the floor, it must be at or slightly above 11.4 psi, this is very important otherwise you will not get best performance. There are not a lot of air pumps that will get it to that pressure. I am on my 4th pump and over $250 on pumps.

We have used it for 6 years at Lake Powell and Yellowstone with good results.

If you can store the boat on the top of the cabin and if you can go with an RIB I would, its a much more durable boat. We are very careful with our air floor.

Pat Anderson · Posted: Mon Jun 11, 2007 11:07 am Post subject:

We had the first use of our Gary King Alaska Series 240TDS this weekend! Got a yellow one. It has a rigid inflatable floor, and we paid the extra for the abrasion resistant bottom...It rows great, much relieved to find I can easily get it on and off the cabin roof over the bow (it is a bit heavier than the Mercury RU240 we had that got stolen). Initially had a little problem with the valve on the floor leaking, but Jim King answers emails, and Inflatable Boatworks fixed it while Patty waited. So far, I will say this one seems like a winner!

Adeline · Posted: Wed Jun 13, 2007 3:58 pm Post subject:

Here is another line of inflatables. These are real cheap.

Adeline · Posted: Wed Jun 13, 2007 6:04 pm Post subject:

Even Cheaper

Bess-C · Posted: Thu Jun 14, 2007 3:22 pm Post subject:

We also ordered an Alaska Series dingy (in safety yellow like Pat) at the Seattle Boat show. I just picked it up and inflated it in the living room. It is the 270TDS which is 8'10" long and about 5" wide. Wow, it sure looks bigger than that in the living room! I didn't like how small my 7'11" Mercury was, but I now realize that being a transom model it had a lot less room in it than this beast. I think we could float the Yakima River in this one with 4 people and a cooler in it.

It says it's only 50 lbs, but it feels heavier than that, I think the "Grizzly Claw" reinforcement on the bottom must add 4-5 lbs. I was able to easily pull my other dingy up over the bow and secure it on the roof. This one may be more of a struggle. I plan to be on the boat in the San Juans this weekend, so I'll get a chance to see how it works. I just keep adding more and more sail area to this boat. Pretty soon I'll be able to sail it at 6 knots but won't be able to dock the boat at all.
Lyle

Doryman · Posted: Thu Jun 14, 2007 4:04 pm Post subject:

That is three of us with the Kodak Yellow 270TDS. Are you aware that you can have Inflatable Boat Works add attachment rings to the boat to which you can lash an aluminum rowing frame? I am investigating this option as we speak.

I'm planning to have Les Lampman put a davit on my boat to make it easier to get it on and off the cabintop. He is designing one that will be fabricated by Brooks Stainless here in Anacortes. If for whatever reason that does not pan out I'll use the Garhauer Davit instead.

Warren