Hi, everyone.

I looked at hard dinghy designs, RIB designs and high-pressure floor designs, but I didn't really see any design that satisfied me, so I decided to add fenders to a Walker Bay hard dinghy.

It took a couple of design iterations, but I'm quite happy with the resulting "hard RIB".

Here were my design parameters:

1. Puncture-proof
2. Easy to row
3. Won't turn over or take on water when exiting/entering while snorkeling.
4. Tows well.
5. Durable in the sun.

I had originally thought to buy the RIB tubes for the Walker Bay which I bought used, but apparently Walker Bay stopped making the hypalon tubes, and reviews of the PVC tubes showed that they didn't last long in the Florida sun, so...

I decided to make my own "tubes" from simple fenders. This turned out to work quite well. Initially I had the tubes separated by a few inches, but when going at any speed this caused lots of wave water to splash into the boat, so I re-mounted them so that they compress against each other and now it's a great snorkeling dinghy - no significant splashing in waves.

A couple of tricks with the fender mounting:

1. Use a non-stretchy rope.
2. Use a figure-8 knot so you can untie it if you ever need to replace the fender.
3. Deflate the fenders. Then mount them so the rope is as taut as you can make it. Then inflate the fenders. That way the fender pressure keeps the fender pushing down hard so that it doesn't rise up to the waterline when you enter/exit the water. Thus no water gets in the boat. I could simply add a loop of rope around the fender, but then I'd have to punch holes in the boat for the second rope near the waterline and I didn't want to add those holes near the waterline. That just never became necessary. Downward fender pressure is enough to get the job done.

At first I didn't have fenders on the transom, but I noticed that the freeboard was about 6-8 inches when I used the engine (Tohatsu 3.5 hp), so I added two smaller fenders to the transom. Now I don't worry about the lack of freeboard there anymore.

Dink (which I named it) handles wind/waves quite well now. 10-15 kts on open ocean was no problem - no signif water coming aboard. We have taken it on long snorkeling trips several miles from the mother-ship. Handles 3 adults plus anchor plus gear pretty well.

See attached pics.