About 3 years ago I bought an Aqualine Inflatable Boat AQSD330, which is 11 feet long. Not a bad size as far as Dinghies go. The reason I bout an Inflatable Boat is because I live in an apartment overlooking the Mississippi River and Lake Itasca in MN. I was really looking for something to poke around in for fun.
I was not looking for something that was going to be a problem for storage, docking or maintainingjust not into that at all. I can bring a few passengers with me too, no problem at all. Even taken it out in some pretty rough water before. We had some weather a few weeks back and the waves were a couple feet high at least and the winds were over 25 mile per hour.
Have to say it handled pretty well. I am no novice to rowing, but I am not as young as I used to be when I used to compete with a kayak (I am now 54 years old). I did get really soaked of course, but I had a really good time with it and the Inflatable Boat was remarkably stable and controllable.
As I was saying, the big reason I bought an Inflatable Boat was because of the storage convenience. I wanted to keep it in the trunk of my car for whenever I felt like going boating I could. It takes me about 15 minutes for blow it up. Even in the marsh areas the Inflatable Boat works just fine, you do not need to worry about having deep water to launch into.
Sometimes you can not get too close to the shore with your car so you end up carrying the boat to the water. Since I sometimes go boating alone, it is not a big deal to carry the boat over my head to the waterwhen I do have passengers; it makes it all the easier to manage though. Just be careful when you drag it though. You can poke a hole in it if you find a sharp rock or glass. If you do make a hole in it though, do not panic.
You can fix it really easy for about $5 for a kit. In regards to the hold thing, if you do make a hole in when you are fishing or something, do not worry, you will not sink. They Inflatable Boats have baffles in them so the are from the rest of the boat will not escape and you will not sink. Hope you have as much fun with your Inflatable Boat as I have with mine!
