Instaboat - my foldable dinghy

So as mentioned in the 'Fishing with Steve' post... I've been looking at different options for portable boats. As an urbanite, I don't have space to park a boat/trailer. I live very close to the river & have wanted something portable to take on fishing/camping trips or just when I get the itch.

Inflatables looked like the best option for me - but still somewhat of a pain to inflate/deflate every time you take them out. A guy at work told me about 'folding boats' - and after some googling they seemed like a good choice. They seemed to perform well, assemble/fold easy, and weigh about the same as inflatables (~70lbs).

The two companies I found were Porta-bote & Instaboat. Both products were hard to find a dealer for. Porta-bote (based in Mountain View, CA) had kind of a cheesy website without easily available info on how to buy it. Instaboat's (based in french Canada) website led me to Camping World in Rocklin, CA... so off I went to pick it up. It was kind of expensive ($999), but worth it for what I needed & Instaboat also accepts a small outboard engine for when I get one.

I strapped the folded boat on top of my car-rack with two nylon kayak straps from REI, and it seemed to ride pretty snug on the freeway drive home. I stopped by the river to try it out. The first time putting it together was a little slow as I figured it out... but overall pretty easy. It would have been easier with two people to help load/unload it onto the car rack. The main quirk putting it together was that the metal latches used to lock down the pieces didn't fit perfectly without some finagling... and one of them bent a bit trying to get the latch in. Overall, I'm not too worried about the thing holding together in the water. I took it in the water & it worked just fine (no leaks!) - like any fishing boat I imagine. However, it is kind of lightweight, so seemed to shift to & fro a bit.

Next installment of 'Fishing with Steve' may have a motor involved!