Ex sib owner but gratefull for forum advice

[T4bus]

Appreciate the assistance from the forum since buying my Sib, unfortunately it did not suit our requirements & we have now sold it, but at least with some good advice off of here we did not lose money. Having read up lots of info on here we bought a used Zodiac ActiV last year, I chose this dinghy as it was well reviewed & appeared to hold value, I'm glad we had the info that the forum provided as a year later I have sold the outfit (during winter) and only lost about £100 or so, in the time we owned it we had a dozen very enjoyable days out.
My advice to anybody considering one of these is that they are by far the most practical dinghy for ease of assembly and weight but the most god awful to clean, for us so much so that the aftercare outweighed the enjoyment using it. I also found that for an active family it became very sedentary, we were unable to find any beaches on the south coast that we were permitted to launch from other than rocky coves that were not really suitable for inflatables, so were left with harbour launches only.
We have now purchased 5 Kayaks which I hope will allow us to do the things we ignorantly thought we may be able to easily do with the dinghy.
Great forum & you may see the new owner on here getting more use out of the outfit than we did.

[Max...]

Originally Posted by T4bus

...we were unable to find any beaches on the south coast that we were permitted to launch from other than rocky coves that were not really suitable for inflatables, so were left with harbour launches only

Where did you try?? There are endless sand/shingle beaches to launch along the south coast - certainly the area I know (Kent and East Sussex going round to West Sussex) you can launch pretty much anywhere you can roll/carry the SIB.

[T4bus]

In the South west, the majority of bathing beaches are lifeguard patrolled due to the popularity of the area, hopping from beach to beach & exploring the coastline proved to be impractical due to rocks in shallow waters & limited bays to stop off without landing among bathers. We just didn't think this through well enough before buying the dinghy but at least buying the right model, we were able to get most of the costs back