Bic Sportyak - hateful horror, or homely helper?

Greenheart

Greenheart

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Lots of recent threads asking for advice on tenders - inflatable, RIB, or solid dinghy? Everyone seems to be aware that shelling out £3,000 on an 8' Walker Bay and a 2hp Honda then tying it up on a beach or jetty, is like flying a flag made of bank-notes, left unattended.

On holiday I saw quite a few apparently ancient Bic 'bathtubs'. For the unfamiliar, these are usually sun-faded orange, about eight feet long, and somewhat resemble fossilized inflatables. And possibly they're constructed from recycled biro ballpoints...

...but I was amazed to discover that they're still available brand new, and only cost two or three hundred pounds, complete with oars, rowlocks and painter. I expect they're as rotten to row as flat-bottomed inflatables, although they can carry an outboard...

...but as a tough, safe, highly-visible tender which surely no thief would think to profit by stealing, isn't the Bic a good bet?
 
Lots around here (the 245). If you drag them up the shore the hull wears and then cracks.
They are polyethelene and almost impossible to repair successfully.
You can get a repair kit (about £45) or some people say you can plastic weld them using milk bottles.
 
I was actually looking at Googlemaps: the open spaces of Chichester Harbour where I sailed regularly in the eighties...

...and I remembered three nice pubs, all fairly distant, if one were moored up in the Bosham Channel...

...the Ship (Itchenor), the Anchor Bleu (Bosham), and more challenging (or a longer walk): The Old House at Home, in Chidham's rustic little heart, half a mile from the water to east or west.

I was thinking, there'd be nowhere very official to leave one's tender, but after dark on a winter evening, one could leave a rough old Bic Sportyak staked to a weedy beach without fear of it being borrowed while you're tramping across the fields to & from the tavern.

Thanks for the link, Lakesailor; I actually think they're an attractive cheap alternative dinghy. And 100% recyclable, apparently!
 
Lakesailor said:
Lots around here (the 245). If you drag them up the shore the hull wears and then cracks.
They are polyethelene and almost impossible to repair successfully.
You can get a repair kit (about £45) or some people say you can plastic weld them using milk bottles.
Click to expand...

I won't have another one unless it was brand new! Many years ago it was our first dinghy and we were pleased with it as it's an excellent load carrier. BUT make sure it has not got a split in the bottom of the hulls! Ours did have a split and we didn't know about it until about a week on our first summer cruise towing the dinghy - when we went ashore one day we nearly capsized as the hull was half full of water and it was uncontrollable. I sold it soon after and got a traditional grp dinghy.
 
We had a 245 when they were called a Tabur Yak II. It was a good dingy, nice to row, carried a decent load, fairly stable. The Sport Yak isn't.

They may drag the arse out of them if you don't carry them over concrete but I bet they last longer than many inflatables if you were to treat them the same.
 
I wonder what it would cost to inject closed-cell foam buoyancy into the gap between the hulls...either to prohibit water ingress, or to seal potential cracks as and when they appear?

Then again, I suppose the Bic's main benefit is its light weight, and filling hulls with foam might double the burden. :(

I'm still convinced they're something of an improvement on heavy, leaky delaminating ply tenders which defy hoisting on deck, and the vulnerability of inflatables (other than indestructable elderly Avons :rolleyes: )...
 
I used one for many years. Possibly thief proof, they actually have real rowlocks so you can use real oars, drier than they look and good load carrier,tow behind the boat ok.
One repair I have seen is to rivet a patch of grp on that has been made in situ, removed,coated in sikaflex then sikaflexed in place relying on the rivets to mechanically clamo it all together.
Where they got the "sport" name from, ??? :D
 
When we first started boating, way back in the Dark Ages, in deepest darkest Norfolk, we had a mooring on the far side of the river from the boatyard. The boatyard had a little fleet of Tabur Yak dinghies and you just grabbed the nearest one and rowed over to the boat. I have to say that they were stable, apparently safe and seemingly hard-wearing. Happy memories!
 
I rowed, and was towed by motor yachts in the canal sections before Loire maybe 150M in France. I reached Tours and dumped the boat. It was bullet proof. Lucky finder!
 
Nearly 40 years ago my mother used one a lot. She loved it; it could be rowed or (as she preferred) paddled around, was very stable and could stand a lot of rough handling. Hers was green and white.

That one went west many years ago; the moulding got cracked. I thought they were foam filled, but it seems they aren't; however, once the hull is cracked (my Mum's went at the angle of the inner hull) they are not really repairable.

I suspect that injecting foam would have a very high risk of exploding the hull!

Basically, they are ugly things, but very light, great load carriers, and pretty tough. But once the outer skin is breached, they are on a very short terminal decline.
 
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AntarcticPilot said:
I suspect that injecting foam would have a very high risk of exploding the hull!

Basically, they are ugly things, but very light, great load carriers, and pretty tough. But once the outer skin is breached, they are on a very short terminal decline.
Click to expand...

I was supposing that one might put in an air-exit hole, before pumping in expanding foam!

I'm absolutely no authority on the stuff, but if (without adding so much weight that the thing becomes impractical) it was possible to pre-fill the hull-cavities with buoyant foam, isn't the likelihood of dangerous inundation almost entirely eliminated?

I wonder how far Bic has experimented with its polyethylene construction - if the material was fractionally softer, might it be better able to withstand impact? I get the impression elderly Yaks grow brittle - although Bic claim the material is impervious to damage by sunlight.
 
Most numpties try to repair with car filler. Which seems fine. Except that the hulls don't really become brittle and remain just as flexible. So they pop off the ugly daubs of car repair paste and still fill with water.
Nothing sticks to the material except more of it.
 
Lakesailor said:
Lots around here (the 245). If you drag them up the shore the hull wears and then cracks.
They are polyethelene and almost impossible to repair successfully.
You can get a repair kit (about £45) or some people say you can plastic weld them using milk bottles.
Click to expand...

Before my current boat I had slightly larger version of the 245, about 3m half decked with a sailing conversion which I used to car-top. It sailed really well and would even plane, it was virtually indestructible, no maintenance and very stable.

The 245 would correspond to the Tabur Yak 2 and mine was the 3.
 
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We used a Sportyak for several years. It sat, upside down, on the foredeck of our Seamaster 23 when we weren't sailing and towed easily when we were. It was adequate for two in reasonably calm water and saved the trouble of the inflatable which we only used occasionally. Due to the rather powerful sun in this part of the world it eventually gave up the ghost - I wonder if some sort of paint ( or a cover) would have been worth while ?
 
Never used one in anger but as a child in the late 60's/very early 70's I had a beach holiday friend whose dad was a sales rep for Tabur Marine and as a consequence had three on the beach! One of the very small ones, a 245 and a larger boat that had a sailing rig; even I thought the sailing performance was c**p and we had a Heron. Never used on since but they seem to make successful tenders.
 
They can be repaired by welding - with a hot air gun and some suitable plastic welding rods of the right type (or a spare bit of boat). Needs a bit of practice to make a neat job but cheap and not horrendously difficult.
 
Thank you all, for replying. I hadn't realised the Bic boats were quite so widespread!

Whilst they're doubtless at the low end of the prestige ladder, I can't help liking their honest simplicity and very low asking price, new. And they can't be any worse visually, than those weird hard-chine folding plywood dinghies.

I suspect if the Bic is treated with some sensitivity, they're more rugged than a similarly-priced inflatable, and could prove a dutiful all-round tender for many years. When their end comes, it needn't be a grim, sad, expensive day - just recycle, and buy a new one!

And, nice to outwit the thieving garbage who swipe tenders, by using one which won't be worth their time to steal. :D
 
Lakesailor said:
Lots around here (the 245). If you drag them up the shore the hull wears and then cracks.
They are polyethelene and almost impossible to repair successfully.
You can get a repair kit (about £45) or some people say you can plastic weld them using milk bottles.
Click to expand...

We hired a couple of canoes from Pont D'Ouilly last week. A guy was mending a split in a returned canoe using a very professional looking bit of kit. He was using extra material from a scrapped canoe, melting it over the top and pressing it flush. I did try to start a discussion but he had trouble understanding my fluent French...
 
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