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Any use in trying to salvage?
Hi RIBers,
New forum member here with a question. I think I know what the answer is, but wanted to ask the members their opinion.
My friend and I have an old inflatable, A 13.5' Campari (Japan) that we bought in 1980. It has been in storage for about 14 years. We dug it out to see if it was useful, but were expecting the worst. It has 3 chambers, and upon inflating the first chamber (port side), we were excited in that it was holding air with only minimal leakage from where the Hypalon was showing through some brittle cracks in the coating. The bow chamber inflated, but with more crack/crease leaks. Here is the sad part - upon inflating the Starboard side chamber, it would not hold, and large areas of Hypalon is visible under the cracked-off exterior coating. There is just too much leakage over too large an area for that chamber to inflate.
My question, and thanks for being patient while I get to it, is: Are boats that exhibit this sort of leakage fixable? I know this might be a hard question to answer, given that you might need to see it in person, but I just wanted to ask, if in general, a fix should be attempted, or, should we spring for a new boat.
I have attached a couple pictures of the main damage areas.
Any response would be appreciated - Thank you for listening.
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