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CONTINUED FROM PREVIOUS POST
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12. Many thanks, Libransser, for motivating this research!
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Well, this seems like a good place to stop.
As must be evident from the previous, I've been thinking intensively about the TerraLiner's RIB for months, and I've been thinking about the "ideal dive-boat" for literally decades. Remember, I am an open-ocean sailor who is equally comfortable with powerboats. At the level of "personal experience", I actually know much more about boats and the water than I do about overlanding vehicles and the land. I love the ocean; in fact, I love it more than the land. What I love most is where ocean meets land, but if I were forced to choose.....
...When I've lived in landlocked countries very far from the ocean, I've felt trapped. As I remarked at one point earlier in the thread, I hated living in Switzerland, because the landlocked nature of the country seems to have created a thoroughly xenophobic and inward-looking people. Yes, despite all those international institutions located in Geneva, and despite the fact that about 20 % of Switzerland's population is foreign born.....
I come from a long line of sailors: on my mother's side of the family, my grandfather ran a fleet of cargo-hauling tugboats on the Rhein River, a business that my uncle inherited. And my great-grandfather was a U-boat captain in WW 1, who sank allied shipping.
..:sombrero:
.... I love every possible kind of watersport: waterskiing, windsurfing, kite-surfing, surfing, canoeing, kayaking, scuba-diving, you name it. So once my studies were over, I decided to unequivocally declare the TerraLiner a "
Surf Glamper", and just follow my bliss, combining my knowledge of the ocean, beaches, boats, and watersports, with my emerging knowledge of overlanding concerns and technologies.
In short, I will be more than happy to discuss the design details of the "
Ideal TerraLiner Hydrojet RIB Dive-boat for Coastal Exploration". But just not right now. I've written pages and pages on the topic, but haven't posted any of it yet, because I first wanted to make more headway on other matters, namely,
Water,
Heating,
Diesel Power,
Solar Power, and
Wind. So if at all possible, could we perhaps put RIBs and watercraft in general on the back burner for a bit? Most recently, for instance, you've posted about
Retractable Patio Covering Systems, and that would be an excellent topic to pursue further, because it relates to
Solar Power and
Wind.
Don't get me wrong. Your intervention regarding the problematic nature of
"RIB boat launch" motivated me to do some more research into an issue that has been simmering away on the back-burner for a while. I've been keenly aware of the problem, but figured that eventually I would come across something that would solve the issue. Your intervention then motivated me to return to a few leads that I already had, for instance,
Sea Legs. But to be honest, when I first saw photographs of the Sea Legs solution, it seemed so
"naff", so jerry-rigged, ersatz, clumsy, and just a bit weird, that I couldn't take it seriously. It certainly doesn't look as "cool" as an amphibious vehicles that have retracting wheels, like the
Gibbs Humdinga. Your prompting then motivated me to research Sea Legs at length, and this research has proven a revelation. Once I began looking at Sealegs videos, my attitude changed completely, and suddenly its solution seemed rather elegant; indeed, perfect.
The technology is much more robust than I initially thought, and again, it's widely used in military applications. There is much less that can go wrong mechanically, and the Sea Legs solution seems inherently more compatible with the basic design of an RIB. Because the wheels are completely separate from the hull, the hull shape can be "maximized" for RIB performance. It doesn't have to take into account wheel-wells as per the Gibbs vehicles, or caterpillar-track storage lockers as per the Iguana. Ergo, the Sealegs solution would be perfectly compatible with the very best and most advanced Hurricane hulls that Zodiac produces. The TerraLiner RIB's hull geometry could be "pure Zodiac", without compromise.
Your intervention also led me to discover the Watercar, an amphibious vehicle that I hadn't come across before. Although it's no substitute for a proper RIB dive-boat, the
"Panther" Watercar seems like it might make the perfect TOAD, if only it had a turbocharged diesel engine!! In addition, all that would be needed is a custom-made camperette "hard top" above, as per the Earthroamer XV-JP. With a few deliberately applied dents and scratches, the
"Panther" Watercar might prove perfect for grocery-fetching in Second and Third-World markets. It already looks so "antiquated" or "retro", with those huge fenders, that most people will probably think it's a 1940's clunker, and not worth stealing. With an olive-drab, military-grey, or camouflage-sand-colored monotone paint-job, people might never guess that it's one of the most advanced and mechanically sophisticated vehicles on the planet:
And again, if the local bridge on the way to the Third-World market is washed out, no problem!!
That's a real find, and may completely change my thinking about the TOAD and its camperette. The engine certainly could be replaced with a Yanmar turbocharged diesel of equivalent power, the kind used in a Williams Diesejet. That would void any warranty, of course, but the "holy fuel-power grail" of integrated TerraLiner systems design is "one fuel only". And that fuel must be diesel.
Another major "plus", is that the
"Panther" Watercar would give the TerraLiner a second back up-boat. So if for any reason something goes wrong with the RIB while it's in the ocean, the
"Panther" Watercar might come to the rescue. And vice-versa. It would provide a nice added layer of "redundancy", "water security", and "back up".
One hopes that the
"Panther" Watercar" might also be reasonably good at rock-crawling, although there's some cause for concern on that score. Unfortunately the tire size is fixed, and needles to say one can't apply a "Lift Kit" so that the vehicle could take 35 inch or 37 inch tires -- see
https://www.watercar.com/faq . The Earthroamer XV-JP was fitted with 33-inch tires, the largest tires for the Jeep Rubicon that come "standard" from the factory -- see
http://www.earthroamer.com/tab_xpedition_vehicles/xvjp5_specs.html and
http://tire-size-conversion.com/tires/Goodyear/Wrangler-DuraTrac-285-70R17.htm . Whereas the
"Panther" Watercar is only fitted with 30-inch tires -- see
https://www.watercar.com/product/specifications and
http://tire-size-conversion.com/tiresizes/30X9.50R15.htm . Not exactly the best size for rock-crawling....
But in any case, once more, your intervention prompted me to put my nose back to the grindstone -- as far as RIBs are concerned -- and led me to find a real, truly proven solution to the boat-launch problem, namely,
Sea Legs. I can't thank you enough for that. One more item off my checklist!!
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