True Kit Navigator Lightweight Catamaran Yacht Tender

True Kit dinghy and Yamaha outboard; unwilling partners – Do you want a boat which fits in the back of a 4WD along with its motor, and can carry two people quickly in choppy waters? Look no further than New Zealand’s True Kit. There are two types, one is perfect for fishing, diving and fooling about and the other has a conventional bow which suits people who want to use it a tender for a larger boat. Ours is primarily for use when caravanning, but we like the feeling of security given by the all-round tubes.

To keep the total weight of the package below 80kg we opted for a Navigator 3.0 with a Yamaha 6HP outboard. Our other main requirement was that the boat must plane with two people and gear onboard, weighing about 180kg. The True Kit’s rigid bottom, made of a high pressure bladder, makes planing possible but no-one would give a guarantee, so we spent the money to find out. Buying the boat on-line from New Zealand is easy. You don’t use the on-line page but email them with what you want and they invoice you to avoid NZ taxes. Duty in Australia is 5% and GST 10% so you need to be prepared for that. Delivery by DHL is reportedly good but ours was a week late.

The first setting up is pretty easy and within a few times it takes us less than 20 minutes to setup and 15 minutes to pack up. To get reliability we bought a Yamaha but we to had outboard trouble at the start. It coughed even at low speeds so when we got home I drained the carburettor to find it had little black flakes in it. That troubled us for the first few hours of running, until the dealer cleaned the entire fuel system and it was fixed. Now we had completed the run-in, but the propellor was ventilating at speeds above half throttle, giving short bursts of over-revving and loss of thrust, very uncomfortable. True Kit had heard of the problems with Yamaha, it seems. They referred me to the propellor expert on the Sunshine Coast, who made us a cupped smaller pitch (7½ X 7) propellor and supplied an anti-ventilation plate, often wrongly called a cavitation plate. I fitted the plate which made a huge difference with the replacement propellor only slightly better than the original 7¼ X 8 ¼. The outboard still ventilated at high speed.

So if it’s not the outboard, look hard at the boat. I had suspicions that the bottom may not be flat just forward of the transom, so I made a plate of Formica or Laminex to sit under the inflatable floor. Zero cost from the back shed. I couldn’t live in a big house on a small block with no back shed full of useful stuff. Now we were planing faster, with just an occasional ventilation. I also made a gizmo from a 250mm piece of 10mm hot-water pipe foam insulation stiffened with a shorter length of 9mm aluminium tube cut from an old TV antenna. The photo shows the gizmo before the aluminium is slid up into the centre. Removing the Formica and laying the gizmo parallel to and 50mm forward of the transom under the hard floor worked wonders. 11 knots flat out, more than we ever expected. Ventilation only on hard turns at speed.

My theory is that a slight ripple forms in the floor just forward of the transom, which catches the air bubbles caused by the planing boat. The air builds up and dumps onto the propellor, causing classic ventilation. My gizmo keeps the bubbles away from the propellor. True Kit should modify the blow-up floor or the main floor, or both.

Would I buy another True Kit? Of course I would. They are quick and easy to set up and pack down, plane with the recommended horsepower, row like a dream and, most importantly, are light to carry. As for the outboard, I might also consider a Suzuki 8 or 10HP, which are the same weight as the Yamaha 6 HP. Reliability is my main requirement so previous experience says that anything else is not suitable.