On Feb 3rd Ralph Diaz wrote: <<From my point of view, the serious downside of the boats (other than weight) are two, one correctable the other not so. The correctable one is the question of bulkheads...use airbags. The non-correctable one is lack of a long life. The boats do get brittle with time and are not going to last anywhere as long as a fiberglass boat. You can extend the life by storing carefully and not dragging a plastic boat over rocks and logs, maybe even nourish the surface to keep it from drying out. Perhaps in our disposable society today, this weakness is not seen as one.>> I agree with all of this, but I would add one more way to extend the life of a plastic boat and that it to periodically apply some UV protectant such as Armorall. I have some plastic boats that are 7 years old and they haven't faded at all (one of the sure signs that Mr. Sun is doing harm). Cheers from UV central, Dave Dave Williams dave_at_paddleasia.com http://paddleasia.com Phuket, Thailand *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - All postings copyright the author and not to be reproduced outside PaddleWise without author's permission Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Thu Feb 03 2000 - 17:26:50 PST
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