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Tributary Nine.Five HD Raft
Overview
The Tributary Nine.Five HD Raft Self Bailer is the shortest of AIRE's rafts, imported or domestic. Please note that the Trib rafts now come with solid blue or solid green main tubes, and dark gray floors & thwarts, in all five sizes - not the two tone shown.
A couple years back there were some changes to AIRE’s imported Tributary whitewater raft line. Measurements on the Nine.Five HD remain the same but the weight has increased slightly. This is due to a new hull material with a thicker coating on the outside. The Nine.Five HD is roughly 71 pounds with the thwart, or 67 without it. The thwart is a repositionable lace-in style one like the American AIRE rafts. An extra thwart, should you want it, is $279 though they are not always available for this model.
The base fabric of the newer material is beefy 2000 denier polyester, so as with the older Trib’s, nearly impossible to tear. It also has good abrasion resistance because of the thicker outside coating. There have been some minor changes to the taper and floors, but you would have to look close to notice these. Tributaries remain a solid value – one of the very best in fact. The welded seams and replaceable bladders mean a Tributary should last decades, and though these new ones are a bit heavier than prior Trib models, they still roll up much smaller than almost any other Asian pvc raft. They are one of the very few that we can get back into the factory box in fact!
Easy to Roll Up - AIRE Tributary 9.5 HD Raft
One thing that stands out with the new Tributary rafts is how easy they are to roll up. The new material inflates very stiff, much like the older Ferrari pvc (Ferrari is a brand name unrelated to the car company), yet the suppleness of it when deflated is amazing. It is actually softer and easier to roll than many of the hypalon boats. We had no problem getting a 14' Tributary back in it's box. So if you are not using a trailer with one of the bigger sizes of Trib rafts, getting one into the back of an SUV, truck, or even a mid size hatch back wagon is very do-able.
AIRE Tributary Nine.Five HD SB Whitewater Raft Characteristics
This little Trib was introduced many years back to compete with models like the Hyside's "Mini-Me". The Nine.Five HD has a shorter waterline and pivots a bit easier than the Mini-Me, and tends to ride over big waves rather than punching them like the Hyside. Some paddlers also consider the little Tributary more squirrelly and less predictable than the Mini-Me. Both are unique, fun products and are not really interchangeable even if their lengths happen to be about the same. The measurements are 9'7" long by 5'4" wide (the Mini-Me is about 9'1" X 5'2"). The Nine.Five tube diameter is a generous 18" like the Hyside. It has quite a lot of kick at the ends, which means the waterline is a scant six feet. It has ten D-rings - quite a few on a raft this short.
Load Capacity for AIRE Tributary Nine.Five Whitewater Raft
It will hold up to 750 pounds if you don't mind drafting pretty deep, but it will work much better with far lighter loads on order of 500 to 550 pounds. There are two main air chambers plus the floor and thwart for a total of four.
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Tributary 9.5 HD Raft