Weighting Riviera Planer Boards

[jobsite]

Hey folks,

I have a set of Riviera planer boards... the yellow ones with a styrofoam back.

They pull a couple of lines okay, but if I put much leadcore out they start drifting back on me.

Im thinking of adding some weight to the bottom edges of each "board" to see if sinking them a little will get them to bite harder in the water and plane out further and not pull back as easy when I run some leadcore.

My thought was maybe cutting out a bit of foam and epoxying duck decoy weight straps (flat strips of lead) at the bottom edge, but inside the molded plastic where it wouldnt cause extra drag.

Figured Id ask to see if anyone else had tried this already. Any thoughts?

I like how the boards are lightweight and collapse for easy transport. I just need to get them pulling harder and I will be a happy man.

Thanks for any info.

Edited March 17, 2013 by jobsite

[rolmops]

For a short time,I owned the riviera triple boards and I hated them.

I was told by the the salesman to add lead on the rear ends and mostly on the outer board.

There really is no good place to add lead and once you start cutting the styrofoam you will find that you do not really have anything to attach the lead to.

I'm not even talking about equal weight on both sides.

Long story short,I sold the boards to somebody in British Columbia and bought otter boats,they are much better.

[Chas0218]

Unfortunately they wont probably pull much harder because of their profile you could try it but I doubt it will help a lot. It sounds like you need a couple of wider homemade boards. You could try attaching tow line to them higher on the board.

Edited March 17, 2013 by Chas0218

[Sk8man]

Back in the mid 70's I made my own (single) planer boards out of pine, beveled the leading edges and painted them etc. I discovered early on that I needed to do something to keep them upright in the waves so I made sand castings and filled them with thin layers of lead and screwed the result to the bottom of the boards (shaved the lead until they were approximately equal weight and width etc. What I discovered was that they did very well in the waves and held upright but it did not seem to affect their ability to stay out further from the boat.....it may have been different with doubles but that concept (doubles) was just coming about then. My hunch is that it might improve the upright stability of the boards if able to be accomplished done but might not significantly push them horizontal as you desire.

[jobsite]

Thanks for the input, everyone.