Drift Boat vs Raft
- This topic has 24 replies, 12 voices, and was last updated Nov 5, 2011 at 2:13 pm by
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The uhmw plastic shoe is screwed on. Glue don’t stick to it. It is a 1/4″ thick piece of plastic. They have a flaw though, too. The contraction/expansion rate of the plastic versus wood is very different. This tends to cause the shoe to pull the screws out of the wood.
Go over to my other home. http://www.woodenboatpeople.com and learn about all of the various bottom treatments folks have used over the years. There is age old debate on what the *best* bottom treatment is.
There is a revival in the old fashioned wood shoe. I’m one of the folks re-using this method, having done plastic shoes, glass bottoms and other various treatments to wood boats. The wood shoe is essentially a 1/4″ “sacrificial” plywood shoe over the 1/2″ or 5/8″ bottom. The shoe is meant to be worn out (It will take you YEARS) and replaced.
There are many ways to do it. I run a Class 3 and the wood shoe is what I use on three of my 7 builds. My future builds for myself and my customers will all be wood shoes. Also, the better rower you become, the less hits you’ll take!
Dave
Have you ever tried to locate that product I described where the plastic is actually hot molded with exposed fiberglass cloth on one side?
I’ll throw in my two cents here, since up in the states I have a drift-boat and down here in Patagonia I use a raft almost every day of the season. One thing I didn’t see mentioned in the thread was the issue of trailer necessity. I agree with almost all of the above comments about the relative advantages/disadvantages of the hard boat vs. raft question in terms of on the water comfort and function, but the main reason we use rafts down here is to take the trailer out of the equation completely. Granted, our road conditions (or total lack thereof, as the case may usually be) down here aren’t anything like most of the southeastern United States, but I can think of some areas in North Georgia, the Carolinas, and Virginia that I have put in before where it would have been nice not to be trying to drag a trailer through the woods. One way or another, less wheels on the ground means less chances of things that can go wrong, and while a flat isn’t too big a deal if you’re just headed out to fish, it sucks when you are with clients or if you only have a limited time to get in and out because of work or some other silly non-fishing related activity. When we roll down here the raft (an Aire) just goes in the back of the truck in a big bag to protect it from light and wear, and the frame (NRS) goes in right on top of it. Then the oars and gear and all the what-nots fill the spaces in between. When we get to the river we’re usually in the water in less than twenty minutes, and while the boat certainly doesn’t handle like my Freestone Guide (Montana Boat Builders) up in the states, it does get us where we are going and also doesn’t require much in the way of bottom repair when the season closes every year – just a good soft-scrub bath and then a cool dark place to sit through the winter. I’ve been running the same boats for four years now and never patched a single one of them, and they look more or less like new. All of that having been said though – if trailer-ing and storage are not an issue I’d go with the hard boat. Although my reference of materials of course, would be wood…
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