Buster aluminium boats

[BogMonster]

Originally Posted by Polwart

Stephen, I don't think you could damage one of these by accident - you would need to really try. I hit a concrete jetty at a fair speed recently (LEARNING POINT - when refitting throttle / gear cables check they are set properly to neutral and tick over - before starting the engine). It scratched the surface only - had it been fibreglass it would have needed serious professional repair. Of course a "true" rib would probably have bounced (or burst!).

The 570 (and the smaller Mac Attack) both look like RIBS. I have seen them in the flesh. I have a FunYak 3.90 Sparfel. I think it looks pretty rib-like. There is a bigger 5-6m ish one which also looks riblike (although a little square fronted for my taste), and has a-frame options etc.

Repairing them if you manage to damage them is not impossible:

scratches - sand out with wet and dry and heat gun restores the finish.
splits - can in theory be welded (not with a standard welder though!). I guess you could patch/fill if necessary too.

I have to confess that whilst I am a big fan when the time comes to upgrade I will be considering hypalon ribs too.

I just like the idea of something that isn't easily damaged because what would be an "oops" or "bugger" in the UK is a major hassle here as has been proved for the last six months because there just isn't professional expertise available. Hypalon seems to be damned fussy stuff to repair and I don't have the facility or the expertise to do it 100% as new. Having watched the video clips on the Mac boats being dropped from cranes, run up on beaches, dumped off trailers onto slipways etc etc they seem fairly bombproof which is good, most of those things would have wrecked a RIB completely or at least caused expensive damage!

Temperatures here are not extreme cold contrary to popular opinion and the media, most winters days are a few degrees above freezing, much like the north of England if a little colder than the South.

There's also the issue of tubes when at moorings - it would be partly solved by having blowoff valves so you could leave them really hard. The mooring I use, while it is sheltered by our standards, can see 2ft waves on occasions when we have NE winds and I've watched my boat with 25-30kt NE'ly, when the tube is soft on a cold morning it will really wrench and heave on the tubes where the cleat is bonded on with probable long term damage potential - a solid "tube" or an aluminium hull would remove that problem.

My basic conclusion is that RIBs are great if you have somewhere sheltered to put it and an expert to repair it but sadly in these parts I don't have either

Thanks for the comments everybody at the moment I think Mac is in the lead....

[Poly]

Originally Posted by BogMonster

Interesting, the MAC one, unfortunately the prices bit won't work the PDFs are corrupted but may send off.

Now - somewhere I have a price list from last year - if I can find it I will pm you the prices. As a ball park I think the Mac Attack was around £6k inc. engine, trailer etc and I think the 5.7m boat was closer to something like £10k + engine (although I wasn't looking in too much detail at that as it was out of my budget..

As you say shipping is the killer (on a trailer - probably £3000) so if I'm going to pay that I may as well have something worth paying it for

Apparently they have already shipped one your way!!!

http://www.marinerevolution.co.uk/pia_420open.htm

[BogMonster]

Originally Posted by Polwart

Now - somewhere I have a price list from last year - if I can find it I will pm you the prices. As a ball park I think the Mac Attack was around £6k inc. engine, trailer etc and I think the 5.7m boat was closer to something like £10k + engine (although I wasn't looking in too much detail at that as it was out of my budget..



Apparently they have already shipped one your way!!!

http://www.marinerevolution.co.uk/pia_420open.htm

Thanks but its ok I got prices from them already

A 570 centre console model (they do a cuddy cabin too) is £5844 ex vat. To that you need to add quite a few bits (underfloor tanks etc) plus engine but you could have a Yam 115hp four stroke single seater on the water for about £14600 (ex VAT) excluding the trailer (edited to add and of course excluding the silly freight to this part of the world!)

I know which boat it's on - the St. Brandan - seen it many times but never seen the tender. I'll have a closer look next time!

thanks

[Tideway]

Originally Posted by codprawn

http://www.allyduck.co.uk/

Went on one of these at the Southampton show a few years ago - great fun and very much a RIB - without the I. Great fun and what I really liked was the "tubes" were filled with empty plastic pop bottles so couldn't sink!!!

Also has a built in trailer.

I have been out in a few small aluminium boats - they are ok but tend to ride hard.

We run a couple of these at work, there are previous posts on here somewhere. V.v.tough (and no, you cannot hear any of the little bottles rattling around!), ugly as sin, but great little workboats. Ours is MCA Cat 4 coded and quite customised in terms of layout and storage. That is the beauty of them, as they can pretty much design whatever you want.

The built in trailer may be useful to you in your location, but we didn't need that for our one.

Codprawn is right about the ride and they can be quite noisy compared with GRP. But you get a very tough little boat with a good power to weight ratios when compared with GRP.

Hope that you find something suitable.

cheers,

t

PS. just looked at the link to their site, the 5.5m is ours.