Floor repair for Eurovinil 265

[Swell]

I've just acquired a 2.65m Eurovinil inflatable boat and it only has one out of the three floor sections. It's the rear one which is joined to the transom by a hinge. It's easy enough to make the missing 2 sections but I'm looking for advice on how they join together.

I'm not sure if the floor is designed to be rigid in which case all 3 sections would need to be joined in a way that achieves that, or if the floor doesn't need to be rigid in which case the sections just need joining together so that they sit end to end.

I've found a couple of photos as below of the original floor for these boats and there seems to be a proprietary system for joining the sections together, but it's hard to tell if that makes the floor rigid. My boat is just like the orange one.

If anyone can shed any light on this that would be much appreciated! Do boats of this type tend to have rigid floors?

 

[Chris in Indiana]

Re: Floor repair for Eurovinil 265

I've built floors for a few boats (See my older posts) but never seen one like that. Most of them have aluminum stringers that run down each side and believe me they are essential! I forgot to put them on once and nearly killed myself when the boat got up on plane. The reaction was sudden and violent when the floor buckled so fast it nearly threw me out of the boat. However I often wondered if the design was such that the boards sat completely under the tubes you wouldn't need the stringers, but then how would you get the boards in/out? Anyway the orange boat certainly doesn't seem to have stringers but the edges of the boards on the white one have a light colored stripe in the finish at the edges which is the wear pattern that stringers leave on floor boards. There has to be something substantial to keep the boards flat, unless the power rating is super low and the intent is to never get it up on plane.
2 points based on my experience. The hinges at the transom are critical and take a lot of stress and the rearward joint does also. However the forward joint holding the small triangular board isn't critical and just needs to be held in place.