Two Big Problems with Caribe 10 RIB

[s/v Jedi]

You don't need to test that, the manufacturers state it ;-)

The hole you had is much easier to tackle than the hull separation and that's where the problem lies: access.

But gluing the hypalon isn't that difficult at all. You can even buy a complete hypalon replacement for your dinghy from the manufacturers. Cut the old one out, work/patch/maintain some on the fiberglass part and glue the new hypalon in: new dinghy ;-)

ciao!
Nick.

[zeehag]

i fixed my problem, which , according to a dinghy rrepair place i know was unfixable(cost prohibitive) by replacing the caribe with a roll up with inflatable floor....

[cantxsailor]

I have small roll up floor dingy and with 2 of us on board with the 4hp Merc it plows horribly. With just my fat self I can make it plane no problem. The trouble it seems is the floor bows inward and is just about useless. I am thinking of making a hard bottom from 3in blue 3m foam board and glass. How to attach it to the bottom so it can be removed for roll up I haven't figured out yet.

Here in Texas you must title both the dinghy and the motor and then pay registration every 2 years. My big(10000lb) utility trailer tags doubled since last year to $108. I am not looking forward to what the registration for "Turtle" will be next time.

I hear it's time for a revolt. Hell Im already revolted. The rich say its just are few hundred dollars. A drip for them, a bucketfull for me. The government is nickle and dimeing us to the poor house and I don't just mean the current administration. These invisable taxes are becoming more visable all the time and the ways they waste it is criminal.

Ok I'm going to stop now before I really tell you what I think...............m

What can we do? Beats me...............m

[zeehag]

Originally Posted by cantxsailor

I have small roll up floor dingy and with 2 of us on board with the 4hp Merc it plows horribly. With just my fat self I can make it plane no problem. The trouble it seems is the floor bows inward and is just about useless. I am thinking of making a hard bottom from 3in blue 3m foam board and glass. How to attach it to the bottom so it can be removed for roll up I haven't figured out yet.

Here in Texas you must title both the dinghy and the motor and then pay registration every 2 years. My big(10000lb) utility trailer tags doubled since last year to $108. I am not looking forward to what the registration for "Turtle" will be next time.

I hear it's time for a revolt. Hell Im already revolted. The rich say its just are few hundred dollars. A drip for them, a bucketfull for me. The government is nickle and dimeing us to the poor house and I don't just mean the current administration. These invisable taxes are becoming more visable all the time and the ways they waste it is criminal.

Ok I'm going to stop now before I really tell you what I think...............m

What can we do? Beats me...............m

i will be using my roll up for cruising with t/t on it----will not register with state--principles must be maintained.....i also have a walker bay and a kayak----so i do not need to register anything--i store my small engines--i have a honda 2 hp and a nissan 3 1/2 hp for getting around in my dinks----is all i need and i can handle them easily without aid...LOL....in town i resupply using my kayak--so i am goood to go!!!!.

[Kamaloha]

Zeehag, I'm sure I have the same "unfixable" problem as you, which, naturally, is why I want to fix it - I'm more stubborn than smart, and I have no concept of proper personal time management.

So far I've gotten the seam pretty well cleaned up, tipped the dinghy up on its side and injected about a quart of ethanol into the hull to dry/clean it; it runs right out the failed joint, of course, and is coming out nice and clear now. I've had a heat lamp on it all night and will attempt the repair today. I'll let you know how it goes.

Jedi, I wish I had your luck with hypalon repair. I lost an oarlock on this boat a number of years ago, went to the inflatable repair place in Roadtown and got a new oarlock and their recommended two-part adhesive, cleaned it all up with Toluene, followed the instructions to a "T" (as best as can be done in the hot Caribbean sun) and the oarlock promptly fell off again a week later. I tried it one more time with the same result. I tried it with the bow handle that fell off; it lasted a little longer but now is half off (and all useless). The only repair that worked at all was to some torn lifeline patches, which lasted about a year. IMHO attaching hard plastic fittings to a flexible fabric with glue is doomed to failure anyway; the Caribe oarlock design is just dumb.

Since the fiberglass is in pretty good shape (provided I am successful at sealing the failed hull-deck joint) I am intrigued with the idea of a whole new inflatable structure (that presumably comes with new handles, lifelines, oarlocks, etc) but I can't imagine it would cost much less than a new boat. While it still holds air, there is really little life left in the existing hypalon.

[zeehag]

goood luck--ye sound a bit like me--with my formosa i was tried to be talked out of---just needs a few more things...LOL--nothin g serious--just major deck strengthening, chainplates, electricity rewire,,,not much lol...gooood luck!!!!

[Kamaloha]

My hull is fixed. I first tried the epoxy trick. I tipped the boat up with the failing joint down, slid a 4 ft vinyl tube into the drain hole, and used a syringe to inject 100 cc of West epoxy into the boat, then rocked it back and forth to distribute the epoxy along the inside of the hull-deck joint. Sure enough, epoxy dribbled out the joint. I let about 10 cc drain out then placed the boat flat and upside down so the epoxy would spread throughout the failed joint.

That mostly worked; it sealed about 90% of the failed joint (and should prevent the failure from spreading, I hope). However the space would still not hold air; the glue had not wicked throughout the entire failure, and air still leaked in about a 1" area of the seam.

I then spread 3M 4000 UV along the outside of the hull-deck joint for about six inches either side of the leak and worked it in with a gloved hand. I kept it from making a mess by taping off the tube and hull either side of the joint. I then inflated the tubes and waited a day.

Now the hull holds the air pressure I inject through the drain hole (needless to say I'm not using very much pressure!)

Since the tubes still hold air just fine, this should resuscitate the boat for a little while longer.

[akio.kanemoto]

Australia - requires registration if it has a motor over 4.5HP or so... bah.

Originally Posted by s/v Jedi

I can be wrong here but isn't the US the only country that has titles for dinghies? That basically means you can never buy a 2nd hand one elsewhere and register it in the US....

I think the rest of the world regards the dinghy as a ship's tender and thus part of the mother-ship and it's registration.

cheers,
Nick.

[fogleew]

We have just purchased a Caribe C9 that was leaking between hulls, had a 'broken' bow eye and nasty marine growth ... per previous owner ... hence a great price. Two problems are design related ... but all 3 were owner induced.

1) The hulls did not have solid, stable material between the inner and outer skins (like polyurethane sealant or FRP) at the front towing eye. The front towing eye had even pulled thru the innner hull and was dangling by the 3/16" outer skin and a big glob of RTV. I ground out the fractured FRP and refurbished the area to a final solid thickness of ~ 1 in (~3/8 hull gap bridged) including feathering into the inner hull laminate out to about 5 inches back from the bow. The only difficulties were keeping the rigid resin off of the hypalon bow tube / tube contact areas and making a flat surface for the inner SS retaining strap.

2) The 2 rear drains are made of plastic with an unknown sealant ... that has separated from the hulls. I have removed them both and created new openings by drilling out the solid FRP laminate I built up 2X the size of the original holes.

Cost for 1) and 2) was about $40 for the resin/glass mat/glass cloth and $40 for the new bow eye and 1" traditional drain plugs. Actual work time was about 6 hours if you take out the time for curing between layups.

3) We are putting on a coat of new hypalon when the weather warms up a bit to correct the tube skin damage due to eccessive barnacle growth by the previous, previous owner. Cost at minimum purchase quantity is about $320.

It's a real shame that someone could let a dink get in this bad of shape. We are not going to 'repair' the multiple hairline gelcoat cracks as my experience says these are rarely leakers unless the laminate is exposed indicating a structural crack. We'll let you know what we find.

[Kamaloha]

Interesting. I just sold my 14 yr old C9X for $150 in much better shape than that, all leaks repaired (see OP) but very old hypalon. I got a new C9X because it fits the davits and space on deck and we like the bow locker. It does not have the same flaw in the bow ring b/c the deck is the locker so the bow ring only goes through the bottom. However the boat does have two flaws right out of the box. (1) They do a lousy job sealing the U-bolts. They are all leaking and dripping rust after only a month of use. I intend to see if there will be any warranty help the next time we see a Caribe dealer. (2) They added a "feature" of a hole in the inside of the transom support knee. Inside the hole is a PVC pipe that goes into the bow locker. The idea is that the fuel tank can be secured inside the bow locker and the fuel hose run through the pipe. However, they didn't glass the pipe to the deck at the transom; instead there is a large (1/2") gap all around, just covered by a split rubber shield. Since the boat sits stern-low in the water, any rain the boat gathers just fills up the hull. Incredibly dumb. I have covered over the hole with a cork membrane but I really need to 5200 a piece of glass in place next time I find some scrap. I just can't imagine what they were thinking.

BTW, you mentioned adding a layer of hypalon. Good luck, it will be very difficult to make it stick to the damaged surface. When I sold it my old dink was perfect below the belt but the sun-damaged topside had a lot of hypalon glued to it. Despite my best efforts I had difficulty with the two-part glue sticking to the damaged surface. By the time I was done the boat was more patches than original (in fact we renamed her "Patches"). At least I paid nothing for the fabric, rescuing it from various dinghy graveyards found in the Caribbean.

One warning - don't try the two-part "hypalon rubber paint". When you first apply it, it looks like your salvation, thick, shiny, drop dead gorgeous. However after six months in the tropical sun it gets sticky and finds itself more attracted to your shorts than the dinghy. Yuck!

[fogleew]

Thanks for the note, Kamaloha.

Don't get me wrong. The problems I listed let me negotiate the price lower. The boat cleaned up well with a little scaping of the FRP hull and compounding. The tubes cleaned up real well except for the degraded hypalon coat on the rear bottom of the tubes. Topsides look great ... so they must have used a cover at some time in the past. A little acetone and the slightly oxidized surface (except the lower rear) really shines without much material removed. I can run the boat right now for another 5 years ... since the leaking is fixed. I'm just looking to get it back to a quality where only PM is required ... like the rest of the boat. I'm glad to hear you like the C-9 size and performance in general.

I would press the warranty issue on the rusted fittings. The correct passivated stainless steel hardware bedded correctly in sealant should never rust. However, some low cost suppliers (from China?) are flooding the US market with inferior product ... or they could have use plated steel hardware in the hull ... or the sealing is very bad & the stainless surface inside the FRP is oxygen starved creating a corrosive cell. My guess would be crap Stainless. Either way ... they should fix it.

The issue with the fuel line tube sounds like a real bone head design. Either way they should have bedded/sealed the tube correctly with polyurethane at both ends instead of the lower cost rubber gasket method. I would seal up both ends as soon as possible.

The Hypalon is exactly that ... the synthetic rubber s/a from Dupont. I am told by a reliable source that has used the product to repair inflatables as a business ... that it really works. http://www.gaco.com/hypalon.html Let me know if this is what you have used that failed. Otherwise... I guess I'll find out how it works.

[Bob Payne]

I've had a Caribe C12 for a little over 10 years now; bought new straight from the dealer. It's been the perfect tender for me, as far as I'm concerned.

Only issues I've ran into with it was a puncture with a tip of my harpoon while spearfishing; fixed it with the kit, no issues since.

And recently the Caribe logo fell off, but reattached with JB Superweld. It's under the sun, every day.

Other than that, very happy with the performance of the dinghy. Actually considering possibly upgrading to a larger size.