Patches Gets A New Life

As soon as the paperwork was signed for Mariola, our Morgan 323, I was already wondering how the heck I was going to get from the boat to our favorite islands. Priorities! Immediately I hit Craig’s List in search of a good deal for an inflatable dinghy. There were some good deals, but all in the $600+ price range. I have this perception that I can fix (and by that I mean destroy) almost anything so I thought there must be a fixer-upper out there. By gum, there was. I found an old Norlantic 9′ red inflatable dinghy that was less than a quarter mile from my home. It was meant to be. I went to the guy’s house, he was asking $150 and I offered him $100 based on his statement that only one chamber had a slow leak, but the rest was sound. It was currently deflated. Somehow, we managed to wad it up in the trunk of my Nissan 240 sx. I drove home, dirty rubber thing hanging out my trunk, with visions of faraway tropical island excursions.

10 pinholes was the count – and climbing. Both me and the dinghy were covered in soapy water, spewing bubbles. The $40 patch kit I bought at BoatUS was almost used up. After a few tries – soapy water, garden hose, looking all over for leaks and circling them with a sharpie, I would think I had them all, but the stupid thing would still not hold air. My wife came home and said “there’s no way I’m going anywhere in that thing.” She sarcastically named it Patches. I liked the name and the boat. Plus, I was not to be defeated. Oh, she would ride in it – we all would.

So now I’m into the boat for $140 and it still won’t hold air. Another patch kit for $40 sounds crazy since it’s such a small amount of material. My cousin Bubby told me that 3M Marine 5200 is better than a patch kit – that makes sense. I buy a tube of black 5200 and get a section of pond liner at Home Depot. This works best if you 5200 the pinhole first, let it dry, then sparingly 5200 the pond liner patch on. It takes longer to do it this way, but if you try to do it all at once and use a good amount of 5200 to make sure the hole is covered, it runs out from under the patch and makes a big mess.

At this point every freaking pinhole I could find has been patched, 5200′ed or both. It STILL won’t hold air. I start reading on the internet about “porosity” (air just seeps out) on a site that sells special inflatable boat paint called allinflatables.com. They said the old material can just leak air slowly and it needed to be kind of re-rubberized. So I bought the $100 paint and went to work. I elected to use the red instead of gray because the boat was originally red and I figured I would have a better chance to be found at sea – if the thing would hold air at sea. Otherwise they would just find a corpse wrapped in a new shiny red rubber wrapper.

The Tuff-Coat gray basecoat went on pretty easy. I thinned it a bit with the recommended xylene thinner. At this point I’m up to around $260 for an airless dinghy. After gobs of fumes and two days of drying, I applied the red cosmetic paint. This is just a water base flexible paint. Took a couple coats to cover up the gray but it looked great. Next time (yeah right), I’ll use gray everything to keep things easy. The red was dry and I once again inflated Patches with high hopes. Two days later she was flat.

Back to allinflatbles.com for some insight, help or divine intervention. I found they have a “fix-a-flat” type product that goes on the inside. It dries hard so you can deflate the dinghy later on and it won’t stick together in a big mess. This stuff was $60 and I decided to take the gamble, I was already waist deep in this project and could not imagine hauling it to a dumpster.

The Internal Sealant instructions say to add equal amounts to each chamber, re-inflate, and then tumble the boat every which way to evenly coat the inside walls. The sealant is very watery so make sure all the air is out of the chambers when trying to pour in – any breeze coming out of the boat will send the stuff right up in your face. Dad and I tumbled poor Patches all around the yard after injecting the magic healing potion into her. I flipped her around every half hour or so while we sat by the fire and drank. That’s not part of the application, but it helps.

Success! Patches is alive! It’s been over 3 weeks now and there appears to be no leaks. That’s good enough for me. I guess I should have tried the internal sealer before the external paint, but at least now she looks great and holds air. Thanks All Inflatables! You saved my little Patches.

My Dad gave me his old 2HP Evinrude to use for Patches. I took it apart, cleaned it and installed a new water impeller and condenser. It runs great. I’m hoping to get a lot of use out of it even though it’s a 1972. It’s very basic, no frills and doesn’t even have a gear box – just always runs in forward. The motor pivots 360 degrees for reverse. It does have an extender installed to make it a longshaft - I could remove it but would have to order a new shaft and water drop tube to convert back to standard. I’ll see how she holds up before I invest the $120 for those items. It might not even matter.

Along with the free motor, a long time ago my brother-in-law Tom gave me some wooden oars. They were the right size so I drilled holes in them to fit the oarlocks and they work perfectly. No matter what the spouse says, it pays to stockpile all that boating stuff in your garage.

I think the total investment in Patches so far is around $340 including two cans of that plasticky stuff you dip your plier handles in to coat them. I used that to recoat the cracking outside bottom. Stay tuned to see where Patches takes us.

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Tagged as: dinghy, dink, inflatable, norlantic, patches