Boats and boat equipment
This category holds inflatable boats and the gear that goes with them: propulsion, steering, pumps, electronics and boarding ladders. The plate on the boat states the design category, the highest number of people and the highest engine power, and that is a ceiling, not a recommendation. The floor decides whether you can stand up on board, and an inflatable air deck is pumped to several times the pressure in the tubes. And watch out for two different pumps: the inflation pump fills the tubes, while the bilge pump pumps water out of the bilge.
Boats and boat equipment
This category covers inflatable boats and the gear they are fitted out with: propulsion, steering, pumps, electronics and boarding ladders. Lifejackets, dry bags and paddles sit under Water sports, here it is the boat itself that matters. The tube material is either PVC, which is welded, comes cheaper and whose seams hold better than glued ones, or Hypalon, that is CSM, which is glued and copes far better with sun and heat. And the ladder looks like an extra until you try to get back on board from the water, where there is nothing to push off from.
The first thing you read on a boat is the plate with the design category. In the European Union every recreational craft from two and a half to twenty-four metres carries one, and beside the category you find on it the highest number of people and the highest engine power. Category C reckons with water where the wind reaches force six and the wave two metres, so with the coast, large bays, lakes and rivers. Category D applies to sheltered water, that is wind up to force four and waves up to thirty centimetres, exceptionally half a metre from a passing boat.
The second thing is the floor, because it decides whether you can stand up on board and how well the engine power comes through. An inflatable air deck is pumped to about eight hundred millibars, more than three times what the tubes themselves take at two hundred to two hundred and fifty millibars. A slatted floor of cross battens is lighter and folds away faster, but it is softer underfoot. A rigid floor of plywood or aluminium is the stiffest, though you pay for it in weight and in assembly time.
The third is propulsion, and the number on the plate is a ceiling here too, not a recommendation. Combustion engines are quoted in horsepower and electric ones in pounds of thrust, so the two do not compare directly. For an electric motor the rough rule is two pounds of thrust for every hundred pounds of loaded boat, and the higher the voltage, the lower the current draw at the same thrust. Steering is not a given either, because a short boat is handled by the tiller straight on the engine, while a longer one runs from a console with a wheel and cables.
The last group is electronics and pumps. Boat speakers and a boat radio carry an IP rating and UV-stabilised plastics, because a car radio will not survive a season of sun and salt spray, and a VHF set is on top of that a radio station for which most European countries want an operator certificate. And the pumps are two different things: the inflation pump fills the tubes, whereas the bilge pump with a float switch pumps water out of the bilge and starts on its own.