Over the winter of 2020-2021, we kept our eye out for a used Porta Bote. I'm really a canoe person, but because of my health, I need something easier to carry around and drag, and something that can handle my weight and the weight of my oldest son. We are very tall people and heavy, which made our last canoe a little too deep in the water for me.
We found one about an hour away for 250 euros (about 280 US Dollars). The owner had stripped the old benches of the decaying foam and sanded them. He had painted the bottoms dark grey. He had also painted the transom dark grey. The body had a rip in the boat at the place where all the folds happen.
I have repaired this with layers of aluminum bitumen tape that were heated up with a heat gun to get nice and sticky together. There are two layers from the top side and two layers coming up from the bottom for a total of 4 layers over the repair site.
The black flotation foam is ratty, but can wait another year. She should still float if filled with water.
That is another thing that lured me with these boats. They are unsinkable. I'm getting too old for boat
recovery. An unsinkable is easy enough to get near shore and dump.
This picture looks bad because I had the two seats mixed up and the middle one bows badly. They are not normally like this.
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