Types of Inflatable Boats: Rigid Inflatable Boats RIBs
Inflatable sport boats have their advantages. Easy on the pocket, easy to store inflatable sport boats are stable enough to serve as diving and fishing platforms. The stability of a sport boat highly depends on its bottom.
There are various types of flooring for inflatable sport boats and more often than not the bigger problem is lies with inflatable sport boats with fabric flooring. Why? For one, it is virtually impossible to design a keel out of fabric. Second, a bottom fabric is not always taut and when there's slack the loose fabric hinders its speed. Third, it is difficult to see damages and abrasions on fabric bottoms as they not all models are pressurized. Fourth, a highly efficient inflatable sport boat is more likely to be more difficult to inflate, deflate and store.
There is yet hope for this dilemma as innovative boat designers merged the qualities of inflatable sport boat and that of a rigid boat. Inflatable sport boat is lightweight and possesses high volume buoyancy on top of its secure tubular construction. Rigid boat is durable and generally has an effective keel design. The combination resulted in a new type of boat rigid inflatable boat or RIB.
RIBs are much like a sport boats in its upper portion but the lower position is made of molded fiberglass or aluminum hard bottom in the shape of traditional rigid boat's "V" hull in place of the usual layered fabric bottom or its fabric-covered wood or aluminum flooring. The RIB's hard bottom makes this type of inflatable sport boat durable with a high performance rate. Some RIBs are designed to carry up to 100 horsepower outboards.
HBI (Hard Bottom Inflatable) Company in Sherborn, Massachusetts, manufactures a 40-foot RIB that can accommodate 40 passengers and an outboard of up to 800 HP (horsepower). What makes HIB RIBs more interesting is that the company designed inflatable tubes to be attached to a fiberglass boat instead of just "gluing" a molded bottom into an inflatable boat. The tubes are attached to the hull by using boltrope-and-groove making them removable and therefore easy to maintain, repair and replace.
However, RIB has its disadvantages too. One glaring disadvantage is that a RIB cannot be easily deflated and stored like a regular inflatable sport boat. Deflating the tubes on a RIB does not really save you space because the hard bottom does not fold or "deflate". Most manufacturers even suggest that it is better to stow a RIB with its tubes inflated. Again, you cannot just store a RIB haphazardly as you need to take care that the inflated tubes are not scratched or scraped. You can't just choose to store a RIB like a regular rigid boat and expect it to last for more than a year or two.
Another cause for concern is its price. A smallish RIB is priced from $2000 to $5000. A 40-footer HBI is pegged near $100,000. The outboard motor is not included but a foot-pump is!
RIB jet boat is a recent innovation. This type of RIB has inboard power and is a merging of a jet ski and an inflatable. It has the stability of a hard-bottom inflatable and the popular features of a jet ski seat, handle-bar for steering and the propulsion power of a jet ski. This type of RIB is commonly a merger of two companies a personal watercraft manufacturer like Kawasaki and an inflatable boat manufacturer like Avon.
There are inflatable boats manufacturers who have basically have the same thing going with their RIBs by jet-drive engine. This type of boat come in varied sizes and horsepower and has the traditional side-by-side seating and wheel-steering. This type of RIB jets closely resembles jet river boats instead of personal watercrafts. They are safe to operate and run fast in shallow water. The inboard inflatable is slowly but surely making its mark in the boat market.
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Types of Inflatable Boats: Rigid Inflatable Boats RIBs
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