A small portable and stable boat

[govallis]

I have searched and searched for a boat that fits into my small car and still stable enough to stand up fishing. Nothing exists and I hate inflatables. So I spent a day to figure out one. Take it out my small car and I can fish within one minute. No pumping, no screw.

 

Total cost $150.11, all locally available. Nothing to build, no any tool required. Everybody can have one, easily.

 

Only 28.5 lbs.

 

 

 

[A-Jay]

I'd be sure I was wearing a life jacket. 

A-Jay

[Scott F]

I’m curious as to why you hate inflatables?

[Born 2 fish]

I’d rather be in a kayak.

[BrianMDTX]

You asked “can you stand in an inflatable”? Although the answer is “yes”, I’ll let you know 100% after Saturday!

 

[optimator]

I can stand up in this no problem. $299

 

[Fishes in trees]

A tribute to your ingenuity, to be sure.  However, in my opinion, IT PADDLES CROOKED, a significant portion of each paddling stroke is just to get to boat going straight again before you get any forward motion.   This video is made when there was little or no wind.  It would be interesting to see how this contraption handles in wind.

 

IT IS TOO SMALL!   Yes there is such a thing as too small.   You have little to no gear in the boat and only one rod & reel - and you're pretty much at max capacity.  Part of the point of a boat is to get on the water with options.  Put any more gear in that contraption and paddling will only get more difficult.

 

I used to have a Water Scamp ( an 8' pond boat, sold in the midwest during the 80's ).  At least in that boat I had room for a batter7 & trolling motor, tackle box, several rods and a Coleman "Oscar" size cooler to keep a few beers & waters in.   I could car top that boat on my Datsun 200 SX and the seats would fit in the back seat of the vehicle.

 

I think it is possible to go too small & too cheap in a quest to get on the water and you've accomplished that.   I want to see what happens when you get a quarter mile or so from where you put in and the wind picks up.  In a perfect world the wind would come up just right and blow you back to where you put in.  Perfect world situations don't happen all that often.  What happens when you try to paddle that thing into a 7 or 8 mph head wind?   And that isn't a strong wind, by any means.  If I were anywhere near, I'd set up a lawn chair & pop a top, just to watch.

 

My advice would be to save your money a while longer, get a pond boat that will perform better and the appropriate gear that will help you fish better.

[govallis]

1 hour ago, optimator said:

I can stand up in this no problem. $299

 

It is 100 lb, you can't even lift it onto the top of your car, no need to mention into a car.

1 hour ago, Fishes in trees said:

A tribute to your ingenuity, to be sure.  However, in my opinion, IT PADDLES CROOKED, a significant portion of each paddling stroke is just to get to boat going straight again before you get any forward motion.   This video is made when there was little or no wind.  It would be interesting to see how this contraption handles in wind.

 

IT IS TOO SMALL!   Yes there is such a thing as too small.   You have little to no gear in the boat and only one rod & reel - and you're pretty much at max capacity.  Part of the point of a boat is to get on the water with options.  Put any more gear in that contraption and paddling will only get more difficult.

 

I used to have a Water Scamp ( an 8' pond boat, sold in the midwest during the 80's ).  At least in that boat I had room for a batter7 & trolling motor, tackle box, several rods and a Coleman "Oscar" size cooler to keep a few beers & waters in.   I could carton that boat on my Datsun 200 SX and the seats would fit in the back seat of the vehicle.

 

I think it is possible to go too small & too cheap in a quest to get on the water and you've accomplished that.   I want to see what happens when you get a quarter mile or so from where you put in and the wind picks up.  In a perfect world the wind would come up just right and blow you back to where you put in.  Perfect world situations don't happen all that often.  What happens when you try to paddle that thing into a 7 or 8 mph head wind?   And that isn't a strong wind, by any means.  If I were anywhere near, I'd set up a lawn chair & pop a top, just to watch.

 

My advice would be to save your money a while longer, get a pond boat that will perform better and the appropriate gear that will help you fish better.

It might be too small to you, but not necessarily to others. I can mount a 30lb motor at the stern. Could you tell me a boat, regardless price, that's not too small but can still be inserted into a car? 

[optimator]

7 minutes ago, govallis said:

It is 100 lb, you can't even lift it onto the top of your car, no need to mention into a car.

I could load it on a car if needed. It would be doable with a proper rack. That's why I bought it. It's light enough to huck into the back of my truck. 

[govallis]

3 minutes ago, optimator said:

I could load it on a car if needed. It would be doable with a proper rack. That's why I bought it. It's light enough to huck into the back of my truck. 

It might be doable, but not so practical, especially by a single person.

[Tim Kelly]

A portabote is a viable solution. Takes a few minutes to set up and would have to go on a roof rack, but it is a more boat like solution. 

[govallis]

Being a car-top only, the Porta Bote is way over priced. The First Strike is the in-car solution, but not available here in the states. From above comments, it is obviously why things like the First Strike has no market here. So I had to make one.

 

https://iq-files.livejournal.com/50508.html

 

 

 

[livin2fish]

I'll bet you could fashion a removable tiller that would help reduce the twisting as you paddled.  A boat only has to be as big as each persons needs at a point in time.  

[Fishes in trees]

Even giving you a pass on the size, I still think that boat is a bad idea.  You don't address how it handles in the wind at all.  Don't address the paddling issue.  You said you could put a trolling motor on it,  I'd like to see how the weight of the trolling motor and the battery affects flotation.   Even with just a 30 lb trolling motor ( which isn't going to do much in the wind ),  I'd like to see what happens to the transom when it is flexed several times after a sharp turn.  I'm thinking it is going to crack.  Cracks in a hull with no flotation are bad.   Point is if you are going to put a trolling motor on that flotation device, the transom should be reinforced somehow.

 

There are more issues with this.  How is the chair fastened into the hull?  If you just have it setting in there, not fastened somehow, it is another accident waiting to happen.  I hope you're never crossing a cove or something like that and catch a smallish to medium size wake coming from behind, where you can't see it coming.   Over the side you go in that instance, unless the chair is securely fastened.

 

How tight are the plugs in the jugs?   In really hot weather, the air in the jugs will expand.  Expand enough to pop the plugs?  I don't know, but it doesn't seem like there is any redundancy built into your floatation plan.

 

The best advice I can offer is be careful in that contraption.

[greentrout]

I would never get in a boat that was not using U.S. Coast Guard guidelines.  Period. Every inflatable boat I was in had specifications for weight, etc. My  Sea Eagle model was NMMA and CE Certified.

 

good fishing ...

[Bankc]

Do you even need the empty water bottles on the sides?  It seems like they'd produce more drag than anything else.  I wouldn't be surprised if the hull itself displaced enough water on it's own to keep you afloat.  It's a clever idea.  I'm not going to knock it.  But you're still spending a good chunk of change on something that's probably not going to last long, as the plastic on the hull is fairly thin compared to what you'd find on an actual boat of some kind.  Plus, paddling that thing for any distance would be real pain.  And speaking as a person who owns a kayak you can stand up in, I would gladly trade the ability to stand up for the ability to paddle efficiently.  

 

Anyway, I load my kayak onto the roof of my coupe by myself.  It's not hard.  What you do, is you get a kayak dolly, which you'll want anyway so you can roll your kayak to the bank from your parking spot, and you flip it upside down and strap it to the trunk.  The wheels act like rollers.  So now you just lift the front up to the wheels, go around the back and lift the back up, and wheel it onto the roof.  I use pool noodles to protect the roof, but it would be better if you had a roof rack.  I take it down the same way, but in reverse.  

 

In any case, I'd be sure to wear a PFD in any small watercraft.  Doubly so for something like that where durability and poor tracking come into play.  Storms, especially in the summer, can pop up out of no where and be pretty intense.  It'd be really easy to get blown out to the middle of a lake and sink as the hull cracked under waves, and then be forced to swim to shore in strong current AFTER you've worn yourself out trying to paddle against the waves for a while.   

[govallis]

5 hours ago, Fishes in trees said:

Even giving you a pass on the size, I still think that boat is a bad idea.  You don't address how it handles in the wind at all.  Don't address the paddling issue.  You said you could put a trolling motor on it,  I'd like to see how the weight of the trolling motor and the battery affects flotation.   Even with just a 30 lb trolling motor ( which isn't going to do much in the wind ),  I'd like to see what happens to the transom when it is flexed several times after a sharp turn.  I'm thinking it is going to crack.  Cracks in a hull with no flotation are bad.   Point is if you are going to put a trolling motor on that flotation device, the transom should be reinforced somehow.

 

There are more issues with this.  How is the chair fastened into the hull?  If you just have it setting in there, not fastened somehow, it is another accident waiting to happen.  I hope you're never crossing a cove or something like that and catch a smallish to medium size wake coming from behind, where you can't see it coming.   Over the side you go in that instance, unless the chair is securely fastened.

 

How tight are the plugs in the jugs?   In really hot weather, the air in the jugs will expand.  Expand enough to pop the plugs?  I don't know, but it doesn't seem like there is any redundancy built into your floatation plan.

 

The best advice I can offer is be careful in that contraption.

Thank you for all your concerns, but for what it is now, it fits my needs perfectly well. I think almost all your concerns have been addressed by the First Strike video from which I got the idea. I think it is the very best idea for a portable boat that's also stable, I simply realized the idea in an extremely easy way with locally available stuff and minimum effort. As you can see in above video, the Japanese fisherman use it on the sea, no problem at all. There may be more room to improve, but, again, so far so good.

 

 

3 hours ago, Bankc said:

Do you even need the empty water bottles on the sides?  It seems like they'd produce more drag than anything else.  I wouldn't be surprised if the hull itself displaced enough water on it's own to keep you afloat.  It's a clever idea.  I'm not going to knock it.  But you're still spending a good chunk of change on something that's probably not going to last long, as the plastic on the hull is fairly thin compared to what you'd find on an actual boat of some kind.  Plus, paddling that thing for any distance would be real pain.  And speaking as a person who owns a kayak you can stand up in, I would gladly trade the ability to stand up for the ability to paddle efficiently.  

 

Anyway, I load my kayak onto the roof of my coupe by myself.  It's not hard.  What you do, is you get a kayak dolly, which you'll want anyway so you can roll your kayak to the bank from your parking spot, and you flip it upside down and strap it to the trunk.  The wheels act like rollers.  So now you just lift the front up to the wheels, go around the back and lift the back up, and wheel it onto the roof.  I use pool noodles to protect the roof, but it would be better if you had a roof rack.  I take it down the same way, but in reverse.  

 

In any case, I'd be sure to wear a PFD in any small watercraft.  Doubly so for something like that where durability and poor tracking come into play.  Storms, especially in the summer, can pop up out of no where and be pretty intense.  It'd be really easy to get blown out to the middle of a lake and sink as the hull cracked under waves, and then be forced to swim to shore in strong current AFTER you've worn yourself out trying to paddle against the waves for a while.   

Without the water bottles, the sled itself is too unstable to be safe by any means, even if I sit down all the time without standing up. Actually that was my original plan after watched the video below. Then I saw the First Strike video and the water jar came to my mind and did the trick. Gasoline containers might be more steady and durable, but more expensive.

 

 

[BrianMDTX]

I hope it works out for you. Necessity is the mother of invention. If not, you’ll learn a few things that may make the next one better. As long as you have a PFD, and don’t stray too far, you’ll be fine. 

[govallis]

I have already learned a few things, in the wet way?

[Further North]

On 7/14/2020 at 7:51 AM, Born 2 fish said:

I’d rather be in a kayak.

Yep, but I'd rather be in a drift boat.

[Lowe and Behold]

On 7/14/2020 at 5:14 AM, A-Jay said:

I'd be sure I was wearing a life jacket. 

A-Jay

Don't skip over this advice.

[waymont]

Those water jugs crack very easily, one small bump on a rock and that's it.

[govallis]

4 hours ago, waymont said:

Those water jugs crack very easily, one small bump on a rock and that's it.

I don't know other jugs, these I use are made in USA, very steady and durable. Two of them are 20-years-old, still like new.

[Linewinder]

Maybe put a rudder on it to help with straightening the paddling.

 

[garroyo130]

http://www.springcreekprams.com/8-stillwater-classic.html

 

A little pricey but at 60lbs its a good one-man car topper that appears to be extremely stable.