Sue and I have talked about buying a hard bottom RIB dinghy to replace our high pressure floor dinghy we have now, to provide more peace of mind when exploring islands in the Bahamas - so we don't have to worry about punching a hole in the dinghy bottom on coral. However, our Avon high pressure floor dinghy has been working great since we bought it in 2003 and has the advantage of being able to roll up and store on deck when making offshore passages.
Unfortunately for the Avon, when I inflated it this year, after two years in storage, it has slow leaks in two of the filler valves. I expect these leaks could be repaired, but the dinghy is 15 years old, well beyond normal service life and has seen better days.
Meanwhile, Defender was having a sale of Achilles dinghies, which we have been investigating. So, we are the new owners of an Achilles HB300-FX hard bottom dinghy with a foldable transom. This is the compromise solution which has a solid fiberglass floor to protect from coral encounters, but has a foldable transom so we could fold it up and store it on the foredeck if we were to make a lengthy offshore passage (like to the Virgin Islands). But that would be a very rare event, so for normal usage in coastal waters where we can watch the weather/seas, we will just lift the dinghy on our davits.
Unfortunately for the Avon, when I inflated it this year, after two years in storage, it has slow leaks in two of the filler valves. I expect these leaks could be repaired, but the dinghy is 15 years old, well beyond normal service life and has seen better days.
Meanwhile, Defender was having a sale of Achilles dinghies, which we have been investigating. So, we are the new owners of an Achilles HB300-FX hard bottom dinghy with a foldable transom. This is the compromise solution which has a solid fiberglass floor to protect from coral encounters, but has a foldable transom so we could fold it up and store it on the foredeck if we were to make a lengthy offshore passage (like to the Virgin Islands). But that would be a very rare event, so for normal usage in coastal waters where we can watch the weather/seas, we will just lift the dinghy on our davits.
