RMR 12' Rocky Mountain Rafts Self Bailing Raft w/Laced Floor

This RMR SB-120 Whitewater Raft is one of the very best values in a twelve footer. Please phone in your order if you want to check color availability. A drop-stitch floor version of this raft is also available for an extra $660.

RMR SB-120 Raft – Outfitter Worthy Quality and Strength!

Rocky Mountain's thwart batton system is easy to use, and the three thwarts are now fully beveled on the ends. This integrates them better to the main hull and when passengers sit on them, and it spreads the load to the thwart ends rather than just to the attachment points.

The inflatable floor design has been improved multiple times the last few years as well. A while back we had suggested RMR take a look at what Incept in New Zealand has been doing for decades, namely tapering the floor I-beams near the bow & stern, and using shorter I-beams for the ones nearest the left & right edges. This is of course takes more time, and can be somewhat confusing for those employees who assemble the floors. But the result is a floor with smoother edges all around, and the results are felt for sure – our experience with Incept boats both rowed bearing heavy loads and paddled with lighter loads bears this out.

From the sides, decreasing the floor edge protrusion allows current to slide under the boat, and the raft to react less to both swift downstream water and to powerful eddies. At the bow and stern, it simply makes for a faster raft since the underside is less bumpy. For the end user, these small changes absolutely mean a better handling boat.

A couple other things to mention are that Rocky Mountain is now using the new generation Leafield D-7 valves, and that three thwarts now come standard with the 12', 13', and 14' SB models. Floor thicknesses are around 9" on most of the I-Beam SB models, which is important if your drybox or cooler protrudes down much more than 10” below the frame bars. In some cases this is certainly adjustable if you use standard camlock straps, but if your cooler has a taper on the two long sides and tends to drop between fixed position bars until it stops, that may mean you are more like 12” below the frame bars. The total depth of any raft will increase as the side tubes get bigger. On the 16’ RMR, you are looking at maybe 12.5”, on the 14’ about 10 to 11”, on the 13’ maybe 9.5”, and on the Rocky 12’ as little as 9”. If you have an existing frame and/or cooler and drybox, measure first to avoid problems.

Construction Method for RMR SB-120 Raft

Feedback on the Rocky Mountain rafts (a.k.a. RMR), catarafts, and inflatable kayaks has been terrific and this company strives to make improvements both large and small every season. There are many imported pvc brands on the market, but with the exception of AIRE's Tributary line most have traditionally been glued rather than welded, and glue leads to eventual seam failures. Even if the better glued brands hold up for ten to fifteen years, there will still come a day when you have to put a large quantity of pvc in a landfill. Rocky Mountain boats have welded tube seams, floor I-beams, floor edges, D-rings, and bulkheads. In addition to the main overlaps, RMR also welds seam tape over both the interior and exterior side of each tube joint. This double taping is something that some pvc boat manufacturers don't bother with, yet a lack of seam tape often means their inflatables have air retention that is less than stellar, especially as they age. Not so with RMR - the extra step of adding seam tape to the interior prevents air wicking along the exterior edges, and the outside seam tape makes it even more reliable.

Individual pieces of the Rocky Mountain boats are not scissored out one at a time with hand-traced cookie cutter patterns the way some boat makers still do it. Instead they are cut en masse with computer controlled machines like the AIRE's and Tributary's. By foregoing much of the usual hand labor the cost to produce each raft or cat tube goes down. We are glad to see someone has taken the reigns to provide an extremely economical alternative to the many glued pvc inflatables out there.

RMR SB-120 River Raft's Hardware and Fabric

Most sizes of the RM rafts including this 12' have twelve stainless D-rings, and six of these D-ring patches also have lift handles. Thwarts are removable fiarly easily, though we would ahve to say that they are quite a bit harder to re-install. The base fabric inside the 44 ounce pvc is a very strong 2000 denier polyester, and wrap-up layers on the underside of each raft toughen them up even more - though those extra layers also make any raft that has them a bear to roll up. Another important detail about boats from the Rocky Mountain factory is that they not only produce them from the ground up, they also make the material they are built with. This gives a far higher degree of quality assurance than you can get from Asian boat makers who have to buy pvc or rubber from an outside source.

Laced in Floors and RMR Warranty on RMR SB-120 Raft

A surprising feature of the RMR boats is that all sizes 12’ and up have lace-in floors, not permanently mounted ones. Should something happen to your floor, your can remove it & UPS it to RMR instead of trying to ship the whole boat on a truck line. Laced floors cost far more to produce, but they have the benefit of draining a raft quicker than glued ones can. It is quite unusual to find a laced floor on a raft of this low price.

Warranties on all RMR boats are six years. If you want to check lead times on an RMR, email us your zip code and we'll give you a close idea. The worst case should be five to seven business days.

RMR SB-120 Specifications and delivery Details

The 12' self bailing RM raft is a 6'2" wide with the thwarts inflated (or an inch less without them), and it has 18.5" side tubes. All Rocky Mountain rafts 12’ and up have four main chambers, plus three thwarts & floor. The 12' RMR weighs roughly 122 pounds with all three thwarts. The thwarts are not heavy but removing them shaves off about 10 pounds. We know this is a weighty raft for it’s size, but all that extra reinforcing material comes at a price.

The RMR 12’ is shipped free to lower-48 commercial destinations or your nearest freight terminal. Residential addresses are subject to a steep upcharge, which we have no interest in charging you, so if you can avoid having the raft come to your house that would be best. Freight drivers might not leave a box this big at your house if you are not home. There are a number of colors RMR makes, but we rarely have more than a couple of them, so give a call or email us to check. We can also have Rocky drop ship any other colors that we don't have here.