CHAPTER NINETY: GETTING LOOPY OVER A DINGHY

CHAPTER NINETY: GETTING LOOPY OVER A DINGHY

Our mission in Cape May, which we had no choice but to accept, was to find a new dinghy/lifeboat, since we had sold the Boston Whaler in Delaware City. The Admiral was not going to risk our lives going out into the ocean, no matter how calm, without a lifeboat. So we set about trying to find a replacement on Craig’s List. There were some promising ads, but by the time the Admiral called, the dinghies had already been sold. Then we dipped into the new inflatable boat market. We contacted boating friends about their dinghies, and they had brands called Avon and Mercury. We surfed the internet under “inflatable boats”. And my oh my, what an overabundance of information – some actually usable. The best inflatables were supposed to be Achilles, Zodiac, and Walker Bay. Achilles and Walker Bay are pricier than Zodiac, so we started with Zodiac. Now if you want a deal, don’t EVER go to West Marine. But we started there, just to gather intel. They were supposed to have Zodiac as their house brand. But we quickly learned that they no longer carry Zodiac, and their inflatables are now labeled “West Marine” and “Made in China”. There are a few different stories about the parting of Zodiac and West Marine, and each one is more conspiracy-filled than the next. But the knowledgeable fellow at West Marine directed us to a local Zodiac dealer, telling us that we would be better off with a Zodiac.

The local Zodiac dealer, Ralph, operates a marina called Snug Harbor, and it is aptly named. Bring your shoe horn to enter. Ralph is a great guy, one of many businessmen we are meeting in New Jersey who are engaging, sharp and bottom line driven. Hey, everyone needs a good profit margin. Ralph took us to his office and started working his computer for the best Zodiac to meet our needs. We ruled out PVC material and settled on Hypalon, because PVC gets torn up in the tropics – read, Florida and the Bahamas. You can get away with PVC in New Jersey, but not much farther south – the sun burns right through it. Naturally, Hypalon is at least $1000 more than PVC. The next question that Ralph posed was whether we wanted a sport boat or a RIB (rigid inflatable boat). The RIB is much more durable, with a strong bottom that can’t get ripped open (as easily). The sport boat has a great flat aluminum or wood floor over an inflated v shaped bottom. We definitely needed a V shaped bottom, because flat bottomed inflatables are really hard to steer/control in any kind of wind or current. You guessed it – V shaped bottoms are more expensive. And RIBs are more expensive than sport boats. Once we determined our needs, Ralph printed out a photo and a description of our dream dinghy, the Cadet Rib 290 Neo. For a mere $3900 we could get a Zodiac Hypalon RIB with a V bottom and a length of 9 feet, 6 inches. Ralph said he would knock the book price down to $3400. Then when he called the Zodiac dealer, he said he had the model we wanted and it was from 2012, so we could get 10% off the price, bringing us down to $3060. But here’s the zinger. To transport the boat from South Carolina would cost $450, and it would take at least a week.

Reality set in fast. We are not leaving Cape May in the foreseeable future. And we are not paying $450 for a trucker to mosey up to New Jersey from South Carolina, apparently sightseeing on the way. Ralph told us to think about the offer and give him a call, and he would place the order. At this point, we thought that the price was the best we could do for a Zodiac, and we didn’t even dare look at the prices on Achilles and Walker Bays. But we were not out of ideas or options yet. The Internet is limited – you can’t really see how deep the V is or if there is a flat bottom on top of the V. We had found a business called Inflatable Marine Services on the Net, and I called to find out what they had on the floor at their store. They’re located in West Chester, Pa., my sister’s old stomping grounds. I had left a message and didn’t hear back. Undaunted and impatient, we rented a car and programmed the GPS for IMS. As we headed north and west, I got a call from Jack Kelly, who IS Inflatable Marine Services. I told him we were going to his store, and he allowed as how there isn’t any “store” per se. He’s the store – lock, stock and barrel. He was on his way to New York to deliver a boat, but he said he would be in Cape May on Saturday (this was Wednesday) and he could bring a 2000 11 foot Achilles RIB to us. Thank God for the phone call. That trip to West Chester over Route 322 is a bear with all the trucks and lights on two narrow lanes. But to travel several hours and come to an unoccupied storefront office?  Not a desirable outcome.

We were on the road looking for a new destination. Jack K. had told us that the West Marine in New Castle, Delaware had five inflatables on the floor. This would give us a chance to see real RIBs and sport boats to check out the bottoms and get a feel for how crowded we would be in a boat under 9 feet. Our Boston Whaler had been 11 feet in length. So why not a return to Delaware, where our tale of the dinghy began? It only took a couple of hours to get to New Castle West Marine – the Admiral has an iron bottom, I’m convinced. I need to stop every hour or so to keep my knee joints functional. Don’t get me started with the aging process. It’s not natural to be cramped inside the front passenger seat of a car for any length of time. My legs need to be free – this is the anatomical truth, not a factor of aging. Uh-huh. We arrived at West Marine, and I opened up my folding chair legs and headed to the showroom. There were at least 6 inflatables to scrutinize. They were all labeled with the “West Marine” brand, and all overtly made in China. By this time our research was paying off a little. The “boat expert” in this store started telling us that these inflatables were actually Zodiacs. We had to set him straight that Zodiac no longer did business with West Marine, and that what he was looking at in his store were Chinese junks, er, inflatables. This deal between the Chinese manufacturers and West Marine is still so new that we have not been able to find any reviews of the quality of these boats. So, caveat emptor. The prices were comparable to Zodiac prices, which is to say that these inflatables, just like everything else in a West Marine store, have inflated prices too. Still, we learned a lot just by looking at the various boat designs and comparing the RIBs with the sport boats.

The New Castle trip was worth it, in that it increased our knowledge about inflatables and made us realize that no inflatable, whatever brand or wherever made, was going to be cheap. Later, I queried the Internet about where Zodiacs are made, and the answer was that “rumor has it they are being made in Asia, in the area of South Korea or China.” Oh really! Probably the same factories that make Zodiacs are also churning out the “West Marine” inflatables. What a tangled web is Chinese manufacturing! And why does it have to be kept a secret if Zodiac has decided to outsource to China? Could it be that they could no longer justify their higher prices, if the truth came out about how much less it now costs Zodiac to make one of these babies? And that’s not the whole story about Zodiac. We learned another piece of information from Joe Campisano at Campisano Marine in Brick, New Jersey. But wait, I had just taken you to New Castle, Delaware, and now I’m all the way up north in Brick, New Jersey, next to Manasquan? You betcha. The next day, we went in search of a distributor of Weaver snap davits. Oh, the vocabulary you build when you start searching for inflatables. I think that Ralph was the first person to say the magic phrase “Weaver snap davit”, when the Admiral told him that we wanted to attach our new dinghy to the swim board at the stern of Slow Motion. In order to do that, Ralph told us, “you need Weaver snap davits.” Say again?

The intel on the Internet was that Joe in Brick had Weaver snap davits and knew how to install them. We entered his domain and he came out of his office reluctantly. He quickly informed us that he had told the Weaver snap davit makers to take his name off the list of distributors 4 years ago. Four years ago! He did admit that he still had some snap davits lying around, but that he had no one on his staff who knew how to install them anymore. Once we hit the dead-end on the snap davits, we turned our discussion to our interest in buying a Zodiac inflatable. Joe dissed Zodiac, not only because he is an authorized Achilles dealer, but also because he thinks their product is no longer top quality. Joe is the person who told us that Zodiac bought out Avon, another inflatable producer, because Avon made Hypalon boats, and Zodiac had only made PVC boats. But the real news, according to Joe, is that Zodiac is having all their Hypalon inflatables made in Mexico. And the jury is still very much out on the quality of material and workmanship for this Hypalon line of Zodiac boats. Here again, we wondered how much Zodiac was paying the workers in Mexico to justify their $1000 higher prices for their Hypalon line of inflatables. Is Zodiac actually paying Mexican workers a better wage than Chinese workers? The shipping costs from Mexico have to be a lot cheaper than the shipping costs from China. So what’s the deal?

My head is spinning as I remember these back to back road trips and the amount of information the Admiral and I absorbed about inflatables in a 48 hour period. And still, we were no closer to buying an inflatable than we had been when we sold the Boston Whaler. If this Blog is boring you, I don’t blame you. I rarely write about the improvements we make to Slow Motion, and now I know why. My Blog reading group is small enough without turning you off by bloviating about arcane subjects like Weaver snap davits. I just wanted to let you know that life on Slow Motion is not always idyllic cruising down a waterway with playful porpoises leading the way. And there may be a happy ending, but I don’t want to jinx our chances of getting the Achilles RIB that we ordered from Defender in Connecticut. You see, after Joe told us about the soft underbelly of Zodiac and its downward spiral in quality control, we started looking seriously at the Achilles inflatables. Then the Admiral went to the Defender website and learned that Defender has much, much better prices for Achilles than any Achilles dealer, and certainly better than West Marine for its new inflatables. After discussing the pros and cons of dozens of different boat styles from the Achilles and Defender catalogs, the Admiral chose one (close eyes, point finger – just kidding!) and ordered it Friday. It is supposed to arrive, the sea gods willing, on Wednesday. And then we have the placement on Slow Motion to look forward to. Do we use soft chocks or fenders to support our new dinghy on the sundeck roof? Okay, okay. This is too much even for me.

For those of you who have made it to the end of this Blog, thanks for hanging in there. If you actually enjoyed this discourse on the not so fascinating world of dinghies, get a life!