For this year’s demo raft, a NRS E-160, we had three main ideas we wanted to try.

Bimini Back Bar

The first was to make a bimini back bar. Biminis are great when you need shade but, because they often lay back over the rear area of the raft, they can make loading and rigging that zone tricky.

To deal with this issue, we fabricated the rearmost bar of the frame to be where the bimini ends up when it is laying down. This gave us a bigger rear bay and a nice space for a floor, for easy rigging of items like rocket boxes, propane tanks and other hard things.

There’s room here for 4-6 rocket boxes, which can be covered with a table as a deck. This area is also a great spot for the groover, one of those things that’s often last to be loaded and nice to be able to get to quick.

What we gained with this set up is a large bay behind the cooler, a place for rigging lots of boxy gear, and the bimini not being in the way of rigging when it is folded down. What we lost with this set up is a place for a drop bag/hatch, which is a great catch all area for rigging in those harder to rig loose items.

Profiled Split Boxes

The second idea we tried was tweaking the profile of our split boxes. We tilted the outboard sides a bit, to fill the gap between the frame and the edge of the box. This worked well. The extra little slope makes packing handles of frying pans, water kettles, and other odd shaped objects a little easier.

We like putting the split boxes in the front bay because it helps keep weight forward and we made that bay a width that allows one to rig in a paco pad, for a nice flat surface for lounging and/or sleeping. The split boxes are 25” x 24” x 14” tall.

Smaller Footwell

The third idea we tried was changing the size of the footwell. Our goal was to come up with a size that’s functional, without wasted space. We made it 21.5” and, surprisingly, it works for people up to 6’2”.

So, there you go, that’s what we tried out with this year’s demo raft. We’re really happy with how it turned out.

As with all the options we write about, how you want your raft to be set up comes down to personal preferences. That said, we also enjoy playing around with new ideas and sharing them, and hope that when we do it helps you to finalize your dream boat.

Cheers.