An inflatable boat is a light-weight but high performance and high capacity boat constructed with flexible tubes. Often they are designed to be highly portable by being deflated and packed into a small volume allowing them to be used as liferafts for boats or aircraft or simply so that they can easily be transported to water.
Boats may have rubber floors, either plain or inflatable, or they may include steel, wood or aluminium sheets for rigidity. The tubes are made of rubberised, synthetic sheet and provide a large amount of light-weight and secure buoyancy. The tubes are often constructed in separate sections, each with a valve to add or remove air, to reduce the effect of a puncture, meaning that should one section puncture it is quite possible to repair it while still underway, and the patched area will probably be tougher than the original.
Inflatable Boats