bought a RIB on ebay

[willk]

Originally Posted by mdearman

For the record I'm ok with how things have worked out so far and not looking for sympathy.

An important point, calmly made. There's lots of advice available on here, even when you don't ask for it! In fairness, I think that the guys were "feeling the anger" on your behalf.

In any event, the RIB is yours and we'll be very interested to see how she comes together. There will be lots of advice (some of it good!) about how to straighten her out. My advice is cost the work before you start and either undertake a tidy up for resale or a project for longer term use. Before you decide which, try her on the water first (either way you have to fix those cables)

[mdearman]

I took the RIB out on the water for the first time today. Scraped the frost off the car and drive to a very windy and choppy lee shore launch at Dores on Loch Ness with snow still on the hills around. We managed to launch without making to big a fools of ourselves and spent 45 mins getting used to the boat. In the process of launching we managed to take a lot of water onboard because of the waves hitting the transom. The water was falling into a shelf that the engine sits on above the waterline, but this strangely drains straight into the boat when a couple of drains to the outside of the hull would work wonders. Also there is only one very small bung for draining water from the cockpit so it took a very long time to drain (there was a bulge pump but it was pretty knackered so I hadn't replaced I yet). All the throttle range was in the last mm of movement on the control so some adjustment needed, but otherwise the boat seems to handle very well, although it seemed very easy to make the engine cavitate on tight turns and surfing down waves.