Post by philpot on Jul 16, 2014 11:55:53 GMT
This is a post I did for North Wales Kayak Fishing site who have agreed for me to place it here as it is intended to basically cover some of the areas to be considered when buying a SIB
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As we have a few members now buying SIB's, I thought it may help to offer some guide lines because as with buying your first kayak, the SIB market can be just as confusing.
Please don't think I am trying to teach my granny to suck eggs but as I have just bought my 6th inflatable boat, I can perhaps be a little help to those starting out in this area.
Let me start by just stating SIB is a ' soft inflatable boat' unlike a RIB which has a GRP hull with tubes around the lip of the hull as most of the RNLI boats ' rigid inflatable boat '.
There are of course two aspects to SIB ownership, the boat and the engine so I will start with the boat.
THE BOAT
SIB'S come in various guises with the floor defining the type of SIB. The most common form of fabric used today is PVC and again the quality of the fabric quite often dictates the price with a great many makes being produced in China. Before going any further let us just cover the ' China ' bit of the story. I have just bought a Honda Honwave boat, we all know how good the Honda brand is with the boat being no exception but it is made in China for Honda so don't be put off because a boat may be made in China. There are many products we all use everyday which is sold by strong brand leaders and made in China to the spec required.
Moving on, prices for SIBs can and do vary by very large amounts with brands such as Zodiac in the higher price bracket partly due to the 'Stronglan' fabric used which is both tough and light. Germany also produce a range of high quality fabrics used in some other brand of SIB. The cheaper fabric is normally heavier than the best fabrics which may be a consideration for you.
The floor type is split into 4 variations.
Slatted floor, these boats are basically designed as tenders simply a means of transport to reach a moored larger craft and are often bought for holiday fun. Generally around 2.3-2.85mt in length are the entry level SIB. They simply have a PVC floor with wooden slats bonded to the floor. They are not suited to fishing and offer very little support to stand in them as the floor is very flexible. They are great fun with a young family and a small outboard for close inshore use but limited for most of you guys.
Wooden floor, these were very popular some years ago as they are both light and offer reasonable rigidity. The floor is split into usually 4 panels with a side struts to lock the panels together. The down side is that wood can rot and when painted as most were, can be very slippy. I believe that some makes of boat still have wooden floors as an option and as I have had several boats with this type of floor, found them to be fine.
Aluminium floor, this is the standard floor section in all boats for sheer durability and strength. This type of floor is easy to stand and walk on as well as keeping the whole structure quite taught. They are installed in exactly the same way as wooden floors with 3 or 4 sections and normally the bow piece is still made of wood. Brilliant floors, the only down side is the weight, producing an overall heavier weight than the previous two and also air floors which I will cover next. Despite the weight of the boat overall, by having removable panels, carrying the boat in sections is still very manageable.
Air floors, these are the newest system and as if to make life more tricky, also come in different styles which need to be considered. Firstly, a fixed air floor, as my Honwave. This is molded to the tubes to produce a rigid structure and creates a 'V' shape in the water to aid steering and general handling but the price is weight because as the floor is not removable, you are carrying the total weight when folded up, eg Honwave 3.8mt air floor is 48kgs, Honwave 3.5mt aluminium floor is 73kgs however the the latter can be carried in parts making a little lighter packages.
The second style is a removable air 'V' floor as fitted to the Bombard Aerotec boat. this benefits from removable floor so less weight in one package but has a very deep 'V' shape so not so easy to walk / move around on but very impressive performance at speed.
The third and most common air floor is a flat air sheet which as far as I know is removable in all cases so now we have a flat surface and removable to aid carrying. Things are never so simple, hmmm, this floor along with both the wooden and aluminium floors has an inflatable keel to create underwater shape or in other words a shallow 'V' otherwise the boat will not turn or handle changing water condition well at all. This has two issues, the floor actually bows in the middle from the pressure of the keel making a shallow hull and for me too shallow however there are some brands such as Excel, Trans-E and SeaPro which have a wood or aluminium plank for want of a better expression fitted on the underside of the floor to stop the floor bowing.
You have to look at the specs provided by the manufacturers to see what will fit with your needs and always remember to look at the internal size of the boat because the given length of a boat is not the space you have inside. If you are just wanting one for fishing, then the style and size is what you personally want but if like me you want to fish and take family and friends out for the day, perhaps a picnic on the river as we do, then you need to consider other factos to best suit your needs.
With any SIB or even RIB, I cannot recommend strongly enough buying a high pressure pump which will inflate and deflate the boat in a few minutes and I will put on some details of pumps in another post.
One other consideration is if you want to use a trailer to transport your SIB. This will add another cost and storage issue but that is your choice. Launch wheels are superb as with kayaks, they make life so much easier allowing you to fit the engine and place all your gear in the boat then wheel it down to the water.
OUTBOARDS
This is a whole new ball game and needs serious time reviewing which motor you buy. It may be that you will buy a second hand outfit complete with outboard, if so, fine.
I am not going into electric outboards because any will propel you along at low speed with a 12v leisure battery and do not cost much dosh unless of course you want a high performance electric like the torqeedo but we will leave it there for now. I will say however that I will use an electric outboard for several venues where I cannot use petrol outboards so bear that in mind. Hopefully in the next few weeks I will be testing one of the Torqeedo 3hp electric outboards which should prove very interesting.
Any new outboard motor bought today will be a 4 stroke due to legislation, more is the pity and for one reason------sheer weight. An example, a 15hp 2 stroke weighs approx 37kgs, a 15hp 4 stroke weighs approx 50-60kgs. For me being an old tart, I can't carry a 15hp 4 stroke on my own so that means that I need someone else there to help. I only speak for me when I say that I would sooner buy a good s/h 2 stroke any day of the week so that I have the weight advantage, having said that, I have just bought a brand new 15hp 2 stroke so there are ways but I will not go into that here.
If your boat states that it will take a maximum motor power of 25hp, you are looking at two people to lift it from the car to the boat or of course the use of a trailer so consider a lesser power motor to aid ease of transport. My own boat takes a 25hp but I am using a 15hp for the reasons already stated and have some years of using this size motor to great effect.
Again, you need to look at makers specs to establish if the weights of different sized motors are the same. Please forgive me to keep quoting Honda but I have the specs to hand. Honda make three motors from the same engine block therefore almost the same weight. The 10, 15 and 20hp Honda is approx 47kgs. Now with this in mind, you have the possibility to buy a bigger motor for the same weight and if the boat can handle the extra power, it is a no brainer depending on cost so it is worth looking into the matter before jumping in and ALL motor manufacturers will use the same block for a few different outboards but perhaps not the same as Honda. It is quite often the case that say for example a 10hp could have a very small modification done to take the motor up to 15hp but that is something you will need to talk to an experienced outboard dealer / engineer, someone like Bill Higham Marine in St Helens, Manchester who I have supreme confidence in.
I am quite sure I could go on and on but I simply wanted to try to offer a guide if you are a newbie to this aspect and hope it may offer some help.
Phil
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As we have a few members now buying SIB's, I thought it may help to offer some guide lines because as with buying your first kayak, the SIB market can be just as confusing.
Please don't think I am trying to teach my granny to suck eggs but as I have just bought my 6th inflatable boat, I can perhaps be a little help to those starting out in this area.
Let me start by just stating SIB is a ' soft inflatable boat' unlike a RIB which has a GRP hull with tubes around the lip of the hull as most of the RNLI boats ' rigid inflatable boat '.
There are of course two aspects to SIB ownership, the boat and the engine so I will start with the boat.
THE BOAT
SIB'S come in various guises with the floor defining the type of SIB. The most common form of fabric used today is PVC and again the quality of the fabric quite often dictates the price with a great many makes being produced in China. Before going any further let us just cover the ' China ' bit of the story. I have just bought a Honda Honwave boat, we all know how good the Honda brand is with the boat being no exception but it is made in China for Honda so don't be put off because a boat may be made in China. There are many products we all use everyday which is sold by strong brand leaders and made in China to the spec required.
Moving on, prices for SIBs can and do vary by very large amounts with brands such as Zodiac in the higher price bracket partly due to the 'Stronglan' fabric used which is both tough and light. Germany also produce a range of high quality fabrics used in some other brand of SIB. The cheaper fabric is normally heavier than the best fabrics which may be a consideration for you.
The floor type is split into 4 variations.
Slatted floor, these boats are basically designed as tenders simply a means of transport to reach a moored larger craft and are often bought for holiday fun. Generally around 2.3-2.85mt in length are the entry level SIB. They simply have a PVC floor with wooden slats bonded to the floor. They are not suited to fishing and offer very little support to stand in them as the floor is very flexible. They are great fun with a young family and a small outboard for close inshore use but limited for most of you guys.
Wooden floor, these were very popular some years ago as they are both light and offer reasonable rigidity. The floor is split into usually 4 panels with a side struts to lock the panels together. The down side is that wood can rot and when painted as most were, can be very slippy. I believe that some makes of boat still have wooden floors as an option and as I have had several boats with this type of floor, found them to be fine.
Aluminium floor, this is the standard floor section in all boats for sheer durability and strength. This type of floor is easy to stand and walk on as well as keeping the whole structure quite taught. They are installed in exactly the same way as wooden floors with 3 or 4 sections and normally the bow piece is still made of wood. Brilliant floors, the only down side is the weight, producing an overall heavier weight than the previous two and also air floors which I will cover next. Despite the weight of the boat overall, by having removable panels, carrying the boat in sections is still very manageable.
Air floors, these are the newest system and as if to make life more tricky, also come in different styles which need to be considered. Firstly, a fixed air floor, as my Honwave. This is molded to the tubes to produce a rigid structure and creates a 'V' shape in the water to aid steering and general handling but the price is weight because as the floor is not removable, you are carrying the total weight when folded up, eg Honwave 3.8mt air floor is 48kgs, Honwave 3.5mt aluminium floor is 73kgs however the the latter can be carried in parts making a little lighter packages.
The second style is a removable air 'V' floor as fitted to the Bombard Aerotec boat. this benefits from removable floor so less weight in one package but has a very deep 'V' shape so not so easy to walk / move around on but very impressive performance at speed.
The third and most common air floor is a flat air sheet which as far as I know is removable in all cases so now we have a flat surface and removable to aid carrying. Things are never so simple, hmmm, this floor along with both the wooden and aluminium floors has an inflatable keel to create underwater shape or in other words a shallow 'V' otherwise the boat will not turn or handle changing water condition well at all. This has two issues, the floor actually bows in the middle from the pressure of the keel making a shallow hull and for me too shallow however there are some brands such as Excel, Trans-E and SeaPro which have a wood or aluminium plank for want of a better expression fitted on the underside of the floor to stop the floor bowing.
You have to look at the specs provided by the manufacturers to see what will fit with your needs and always remember to look at the internal size of the boat because the given length of a boat is not the space you have inside. If you are just wanting one for fishing, then the style and size is what you personally want but if like me you want to fish and take family and friends out for the day, perhaps a picnic on the river as we do, then you need to consider other factos to best suit your needs.
With any SIB or even RIB, I cannot recommend strongly enough buying a high pressure pump which will inflate and deflate the boat in a few minutes and I will put on some details of pumps in another post.
One other consideration is if you want to use a trailer to transport your SIB. This will add another cost and storage issue but that is your choice. Launch wheels are superb as with kayaks, they make life so much easier allowing you to fit the engine and place all your gear in the boat then wheel it down to the water.
OUTBOARDS
This is a whole new ball game and needs serious time reviewing which motor you buy. It may be that you will buy a second hand outfit complete with outboard, if so, fine.
I am not going into electric outboards because any will propel you along at low speed with a 12v leisure battery and do not cost much dosh unless of course you want a high performance electric like the torqeedo but we will leave it there for now. I will say however that I will use an electric outboard for several venues where I cannot use petrol outboards so bear that in mind. Hopefully in the next few weeks I will be testing one of the Torqeedo 3hp electric outboards which should prove very interesting.
Any new outboard motor bought today will be a 4 stroke due to legislation, more is the pity and for one reason------sheer weight. An example, a 15hp 2 stroke weighs approx 37kgs, a 15hp 4 stroke weighs approx 50-60kgs. For me being an old tart, I can't carry a 15hp 4 stroke on my own so that means that I need someone else there to help. I only speak for me when I say that I would sooner buy a good s/h 2 stroke any day of the week so that I have the weight advantage, having said that, I have just bought a brand new 15hp 2 stroke so there are ways but I will not go into that here.
If your boat states that it will take a maximum motor power of 25hp, you are looking at two people to lift it from the car to the boat or of course the use of a trailer so consider a lesser power motor to aid ease of transport. My own boat takes a 25hp but I am using a 15hp for the reasons already stated and have some years of using this size motor to great effect.
Again, you need to look at makers specs to establish if the weights of different sized motors are the same. Please forgive me to keep quoting Honda but I have the specs to hand. Honda make three motors from the same engine block therefore almost the same weight. The 10, 15 and 20hp Honda is approx 47kgs. Now with this in mind, you have the possibility to buy a bigger motor for the same weight and if the boat can handle the extra power, it is a no brainer depending on cost so it is worth looking into the matter before jumping in and ALL motor manufacturers will use the same block for a few different outboards but perhaps not the same as Honda. It is quite often the case that say for example a 10hp could have a very small modification done to take the motor up to 15hp but that is something you will need to talk to an experienced outboard dealer / engineer, someone like Bill Higham Marine in St Helens, Manchester who I have supreme confidence in.
I am quite sure I could go on and on but I simply wanted to try to offer a guide if you are a newbie to this aspect and hope it may offer some help.
Phil