I'll start.

I love my inflatable. It is a lot of fun to sail in any wind, I can do 5-6 knots of boat speed in as much wind. The boat is made to be forgiving, so while top speed is around 18 knots, you can sail in winds as high as 35 knots. The boat is confidence inspiring, I sail flat instead of flying a hull, even in those 35 knot winds. I have been out in wind gusts as high as 40 knots and I have not once dumped my boat. I also have the confidence that I can right my boat in less than 2 minutes, the boat only weighs 97 pounds, so I never feel overpowered or outweighed by the boat.

I rinse the hulls in the surf, or I funded the kickstarter for RinseKit, which allows me to wash the boat down with fresh water before being packed into the bags.

I pack them after every sail, the MiniCat 420 (the inflatable I sail most often) takes about 30 minutes to set up, and I can completely disassemble and pack it away in about 15 minutes. I would spend more time folding sails and stowing everything on my Pearson 26 when I owned a larger keel boat.

I actually travel to most sailing spots via my 2014 Mitsubishi Mirage, I am not sure it is capable of towing an empty trailer.

Most inflatable beach cats (even other brands than MiniCat) have roller furling jibs and it is very simple to drop the main. In higher wind days, I would not recommend leaving your boat with the main up, you will find it on its side when you come back. It's also nice to store them head to wind on the beach. The most common inflatables weigh less than 100 pounds, so turning them is quite trivial.

If you drove by my house, you'd never know I owned 4 sailboats. I love being able to keep my sailboat out of the elements and out of sight.


Alex Caslow
Red Beard Sailing
Exclusive distributor for MiniCat, X-Cat, and Takacat
www.redbeardsailing.com