: Sevylor, a French company with a US subsidiary has a one person inflatable,
: mad of PVC, Nylon and Polyurethane. Not sure if this is made just for the
: US market or whether it is available worldwide.

: The moment when you get into trouble in a kayak is probably not an ideal time
: to start unpacking and pumping up an inflatable. A self-inflating boat
: would be much better. A recent trip to the hardware store (actually, a
: Lowes Home Center) exposed me to a new toy--er, tool This is a beltmounted
: CO2 (Carbon Dioxide) system made to feed the pressurized gas from
: containers used by paintball guns into a carpenter's nail gun. A nail gun
: doesn't use a large volume of gas for each nail that it drives, but it
: needs the pressure to be fairly high. That is ideal for the CO2 can.
: Wearing it on your belt means you don't need to drap around long lengths
: of air hose from a heavy, noisy compressor.

: The device consists of a regulator which screws onto either 9 ounce or 20
: ounce cans of CO2. The smaller can provides about 5 cu ft of air and the
: larger can provides about 12.5 cu ft. It seems to me that a dedicated
: person could feed the hose from one of these devices into an inflation
: valve on a small inflatable boat, and just turn the valve to rapidly fill
: the boat. YOu'ld probably want to go with the smallest container, and
: maybe bleed off a bit of the gass before hand to avoid overfilling the
: boat, or perhaps one could use a pressure relief valve, which could be put
: inline to keep from overinflating the boat.

: Just a thought

: PGJ

Thanks Paul,
Any one-man raft I'd be interested in wouldn't be for with kayaks, more for small sailing boats or small fishing boats. Although thinking about it, I don't think I'd be going out too far in a small dinghy. Less need for liferafts then.

That belt-mounted gas canister sounds good, the usual nail-gun cartridges here aren't small, about a foot long. Having a belt mounted can would make it easier to use the nail-gun in tight spaces.

Mike Savage
South West Cork