I love this thing - took it on a section of the Pacific Crest Trail in WA this summer and had a ball pulling it out for some lake paddling. I also carried with us two paddle pieces (just the blades, not the shafts) from an old inflatable kayak I had. Very maneuverable with them!

A side note, I also made the silly mistake of putting the raft in a rocky creek and it got a small tear very quickly. User error, I now know the limitations...

I would like to preface this review by saying I love the design. it inflates very quickly without having to pack pumps and fits well in a 10L drybag with a few nylon inflatable life jackets.

I had no issues with the raft at all the first outing. I went out with a few friends on a 6 mile light duty rafting trip that often has multiple groups of people just lashing cheap intex pool tubes together and makes it down the river without incident mostly. There is one Rapid area I would say just barely Class II that you have to navigate but other wise a very leisurely float with few obstacles. made it to the end of the float packed everything up and thought "Man this is the best money I ever spent on a river run." brought it home folded the raft up the same way it came in the packaging and threw it into one of my dry bags for storage.

The second excursion on the same 6 mile run that morning I notice there are some air bubbles in the seam tape before we start setting up and lashing boats together, but don't think much of it at the time. Get the boat to the river and it feels like its deflated a little bit. I unroll the easy fill mouth thinking oh I must not have kept seams from forming while rolling the mouth up and re inflate the raft and threw it onto the shore and water splashes up on top of the walls of the boat. Immediately I hear and see two hissing leaks bubbling from the seams of the raft through the seam tape that seems to be peeling and cracked.

I must say I was…

This is just about the perfect boat for wetlands research work requiring quick visits to field sites not accessible with a vehicle. With a little bit of practice and having watched a couple of videos I can setup the boat in about 30 seconds and take it down in a similar time. Light enough to hike in without slowing me down at all. Great for grabbing water samples, downloading data from sensors etc, more involved work would benefit from a more stable platform but the speed of deployment and weight make it extremely useful when trying to get to a lot of different sites in a day.