Back in September Renee found a used RIB (Rigid Inflatable Boat) at a marine consignment store while down in Southport, NC. Well she didn’t actually find it in the store, it was lying in the yard behind the store. Since we did not have a boat at this time, it was easy to pass on on it.
In October we were back in Southport and Renee went to check on the RIB. Guess what? It was still there right where she left it a month earlier, lying face down in the dirt. It was in pretty rough shape, full of dirt and leaves, lacking in air, but the bottom was fiberglass and looked to be in good shape. We added air to the tubes and they did not appear to have any holes in them. My first thought was no way but Renee saw the beauty in it as any good mother would see in her children, so we purchased it.
We began to clean it up and Renee worked to remove the leaves, dirt, old numbers and as much of the old paint as possible. Turns out the RIB material was Hypalon rather than PVC. This is a bonus since Hypalon is the preferred material as it holds up better to the Suns UV rays and is tougher than PVC. Here is what it looked like after it was cleaned up. Still looking pretty bad but much better than the way we found it. Now that we determined it was a good candidate for a facelift, we purchased some patches, D-Rings, a rub rail and paint.
After a lot of glueing on D-Rings, patches and a new rub rail, it was ready for a fresh coat of paint. There were a few spots on the underside of the fiberglass that needed a bit of gelcoat and the tubes received two coats of paint. Five nights of getting high on glue and paint fumes, the headaches have finally gone. Now we have a reliable means of transportation and we are confident it won’t be the ugliest one on the dingy dock.
We knew we did not want to refer to our new RIB as dingy, tender or the what-cha-ma-call-it, after all something this good looking deserves respect. We thought about “Vol Navy” but realized it would be to long to repeat. A dingy in the boating world is your vehicle for transportation. It has to take you to and from shore and everywhere else you want to go without having to go by boat. 5KNOTS has a 6′ 2″ draft (how deep the keel is in the water) which will prevent us being able to go into many places due to not having enough water depth.
Renee had a 1999 VW Jetta that was silver, in good condition and was very reliable. It reminded her of our new RIB, so we decided to name it Jetta.
