April 28, 2019
On the March 15th of last year, we bought a Maxxon MX 230 Air Floor inflatable dinghy from Smart Marine in New Zealand. We didn’t use it until we got to Fiji in June of 2018. We used it daily for six months while in Fiji and then not again until we got to New Zealand’s Stewart Island.
Before we left Fiji, the dinghy developed a leak – leaking water into the dinghy. This leak got worse and worse and plagued us all through our trip to Stewart Island, where being warm and dry after a dinghy ride would have been really nice.
The fabric glued to the transom delaminated from the wood, causing the leak. Smart Marine suggested that I might have caused this by installing wheels. In this video, I cut the dinghy apart to see if that’s really what happened.
Here’s a video that shows the tear-down…
In addition to the leak, the dinghy had another major problem: With the air floor installed, the center of gravity with two people in the dinghy was high enough that the boat was totally unstable. Each time we turned, we felt like we were going to capsize. We took the floor out and left it out after our first test drive. I think, contributing to this problem, was the small diameter of the tubes – only 14 inches.
(Note that we were using a small, light 3.6 HP 2-stroke engine so the engine weight or power wasn’t the cause of the instability.)
We bought this dinghy because we wanted something small and light, easy to get on and off deck and stow. It was that, but at too big a cost in comfort and stability. Never again will we buy an inflatable with tubes that small.
To give it some credit, those small tubes never leaked air. We pumped it up once when we got to Fiji and only added a little air once in the six months we were there.
I don’t think I’d buy another Maxxon product again, but in fairness, maybe one of their other models, without this silly, fabric covered, folding transom would be more serviceable. -Rich
