Pump up the volume

I’m a firm believer in the old adage, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” and had never serviced the three air valves on my old 10ft Caribe RIB dinghy. I’d bought it second-hand and had kept it for over a year, unattended, on the davits of my schooner Britannia.

As with most old dinghies it was necessary to re-inflate it from time to time, but just lately I’d noticed the bow section needing more air than the other chambers, so it was time to find out why.

The most obvious thing to look at first were the inflation/deflation valves. There are three separate