I am about to come unglued.... or at least my Zodiac is

[SaltSeaSailor]

I have a 8 or 9 year old Zodiac, the boat is in near perfect condition with one slight problem. The bottom is separating from the tubes. The glue seems to be failing only on the floor, the tubes and rub rails seem fine. Can these boats be saved by re-gluing or is it more trouble than its worth?

[cabo_sailor]

Zodiac is infamous for this (they also build the West Marine inflatables), there have been three such occurrences at my own marina including my last West Marine inflatable. As to it being more trouble etc. I would take it to a shop that specializes in repairing inflatables and ask them.

Rich

[MarkJ]

Ours is 10 years old and just a few miles from completing her first circumnavigation! We bumped into her original owners in Tonga and they were a tad surprised she was still alive.

We were quoted $400 to reseal the floor to the tubes so of course we told that company to shove it! We will be in Thailand this year and hopefully someone will be a bit more cost reasonable.

Till then we use a few plastic boxes, more like trays in the bottom to take our shopping etc. Our feet get wet!!!!!!!!

When people get in we tell them how to stand on the oars NOT on the bottom, and put their feet on the tubes.

Also I changed the bottom plug to the inside (just hammer out the whole fitting) and now run the dink with the plug out. Even towed or at rest the dink has her plug out.

We are going to an island in a few days where we will do a thorough bottom job on her with pool glue

Will 'Lil Dink survive her second circumnavigation? Its on the cards


Mark

[SaltSeaSailor]

thanks guys, I may try to find someone to repair it but more than likely I will be shopping for a new one. I spent a few minutes trying to line up the floor to re-glue and it was rather discouraging, both inflated and deflated it just seemed beyond my skill and or patience level.

[ggray]

I had a Zodiac that the floor became detached from the tubes.
I was able to reglue with a 2 part vinyl glue made by 3M that unfortunately is no longer available. You should be able to find a 2 part inflatable glue for PVC and fix it yourself.
Nice thing about the 3M glue was that it was in small tubes, because the bottom didn't go out all at once. Every couple of months, I had a new leak to fix. So I kept a few glue kits on board.