Not sure how much I can contribute to this as our tiny Mercury Ocean Runner 340 (Quicksilver) rib has a glass hull and weighs in bare at 89 kilos. Not alumin sorry, and only powered by a 20 efi Mariner on tiller. It has a decent ‘V’ (shallow), wide beam for its length, and perhaps very marginally slightly more ‘V’ (particularly forward) than the current crop of alumin hulls…not by much though. Reckon performance and handling should be similar length for length.
Coming from plenty of experience with medium size sibs…far too numerous Zodiacs circa 3.5/3.6 to mention (all pretty good tbh), Aerotec 3.8 (deffo the dogz bollx), F-Rib 375 (fast but ouch!), Honwave T38 (impressive on a good day), Aqua Marina 295 (tried hard, had fun but ultimately failed for us) and currently running an Elling KB 350 (love that tunnel hull ride). All powered with 20 horse motors except the Elling which is perfect with a lightweight 9.8 smoker and the Aqua Marina which became lethal at anything over 8hp.
First off non of these lightweight ribs is going to compare with the legendary SR4…no way. They just haven’t got anywhere near the ‘V’ or hull shape/weight to compete.
Not sure how you can compare ribs with sibs anyways. In my book a rib of comparable length should and will outperform any sib per se. It will be faster, track and turn better/tighter so if you can trailer/launch/store a small rib why on earth bother with a sib….sibs on trailers, hey I’ve done it, but wtf!
On the downside all these lightweight small ribs give a bone jarringly harsh ride in typical UK conditions/chop and practically we could push on harder, further and faster in most sibs we’ve run.
The little ribs are more efficient though, with negligible hull flex worth a knot or two over the sibs. Under perfect conditions our current Ocean Runner 340 will max out at 23/24 knots, compared to 22 knots in the T38/Zodiacs and 21 knots in the Aerotec….all one up plus kit with 20 horses.
Overall our little rib, despite loosing between 200 to 400mm in length, generally outperforms all our previous and current sibs. It doesn’t possess any greater sea keeping qualities but is faster, tracks and banks in turns better, is definitely more responsive and huge fun, but has a harsher ride which ultimately slows it down over many sibs in choppy conditions.
Personally, size for size, if you don’t need a folding boat, I reckon one of the lightweight ribs would be the way to go. [emoji106]
It's a superb piece of neat packaging though and seems to be the sweet spot in the range in sizing - still listed as only 75kg.
