Would you buy a second hand RIB for a dive club.

[swginn]

I don't agree with the Tornado not making a good dive RIB. They are very beamy RIBs at 1.6m internal beam and 2.6m overall. They have a high lift hull which makes them excellent load carriers also. Barnet Marine, the UK dealers for Tornado have been setting up dive ribs for nearly 20 yrs and have great experience in this field. A lot of local dive clubs in my area have imported Tornados also and are very happy with them.

Also if cost is an issue www.xs-ribs.co.uk are an economic alternative to a Tornado. They have the same wide beam and also have a high lift hull making them good load carriers. They are kitted out by Barnet Marine also so can be set up well for diving. Andy's dive club are looking at getting one I think so maybe you should PM him?

[Simon B]

As a complete aside to this, have you noticed that divers appear to "need" a seriously purposeful boat equiped for anything that tends to be from the renowned deep blue water offshore stables, yet most diving is done in good conditions!

Kind of like "no I must have a Hummer" (available @ 25k!) instead of buying an estate car (boring) It would be interesting to see a dive club rib design thread as I think at the end a more realistic spec would emerge.

How many fora members operate ribs for diving with a transverse cylinder rack have seen a few but not dived/helmed from one.

[Jackwabbit]

We operate a Humber 5.5m Assault with a Suzuki 70hp 4 stroke, it does carry 6 divers with single cylinders & the Cox. We did have problems getting up on the plain but after down sizing the prop it is now going well. We had to go with this small combination for a number of reasons.
1. The boat had to fit inside an old lorry container, without deflating it (we don’t want to spend half hour pumping it up at 6:30am) so it couldn’t be too wide.
2. The boat has to be small & light enough to tow behind an average saloon car, no one in our club has a 4X4
3. It had to be a cheap as possible (I think all clubs can relate to this one)

Needless to say with it being a small boat it is very cosy, with not a lot of room to kit up but we manage.
If you have the space to store a larger boat & the vehicles to tow it & wanting it to carry 8 divers I would go for as large as you can afford. The Humber 5.5m is very good for 4 divers & a Cox but with 6 it’s on the limit.
I have been at a few dive sites where there have been Tornado RIB’s they are wider & sit a lot higher in the water than our little Humber, and I have seen the 6.5m Tornado with 8 divers & a Cox on board & they seem to have a lot more room then we have.
XS-Ribs started coming onto the market just after we ordered the Humber, their price looks good & the hull looks the same as the Tornado so I would imagine they would handle the same with as much space only cheaper.

If these were available earlier we may have ended up with one of these instead of the Humber, although we would probably have to half deflate it to get it in the container.

[Mosser]

I've dived off a wide beam RIB with traverse bottle rack. There weren't too many on board and it left a lot of deck space for kitting up. However, it was cumbersome to walk past and three of the six bottles were awkward to get at on the rack.

As for the need to get purposeful boats, it guess they do have to be tough because they get a lot of hard use. I guess you could dive off just about any RIB, but when trying to organise a bunch, that's when you start thinking "one of those might be good" and so on...

[Rupert Bear]

Originally Posted by Simon B

As a complete aside to this, have you noticed that divers appear to "need" a seriously purposeful boat equiped for anything that tends to be from the renowned deep blue water offshore stables, yet most diving is done in good conditions!

It is really about getting to the site. The best seaboat allows higher speeds to be maintained. Diving can be carried out in the lee of somewhere but you still need to get there!

[Simon B]

Very much agreed R Bear, it wasnt meant as a dig, I like seeing applied logical thinking and appropriate design. I've seen lots of good ideas for divers in non dive club/operators ribs.

Equally I seen some total cobblers, someone fitted a non baffled battery vent to the top of console on the front...very useful for washing off the electronics. Another beuaty warrants a picture which is at home I'll post it tomorrow if I remember.