Cattle Dog 'floating ute' revealed
Need to transport your motorcycle across a body of water? Introducing the Impact Boats Cattle Dog...For intrepid motorcycle adventurers who can't help but wonder what's on the other side of that river or lake, the all-new Impact Boats Cattle Dog could be the solution you've been waiting for.
Something akin to a floating ute, the Cattle Dog will come in sizes ranging from 5.0 metres to 12.0 metres, with a “wide range” of layout options of offer for buyers.
And while you'll still need a vehicle to tow the boat to your chosen destination, for motorcyclists it holds the promise of turning any river into a road, making more remote parts of the Australian landscape all that more accessible.
The Cattle Dog is classed as a full HDPE (industrial plastic) work platform suitable for rescue work or diving, moving people, animals or machinery, or just carrying any heavy-duty workload that the Cattle Dog's owner throws at it.
A drop-down bow ramp provides easy access to the water, letting your roll motorcycles on or off with minimal fuss.
Impact Boats chief executive Peter Baxevanis said the idea for the Cattle Dog was born after he tried to source a similar boat overseas and couldn’t find one, prompting him to design his own version from the keel up and add it to Impact’s showroom.
And it will be available to recreational boat enthusiasts. “We’re going to start building the first one this week,” Baxevanis told bikesales' sister site, boatsales. “It’s a boat we’re building predominantly for commercial use, but pretty much anyone can use it.”
The image teasing the new Cattle Dog line shows what the platform will be capable of. For anyone with a spirit of off-road adventure, the Cattle Dog will include tie-down points so it can transport a pair of motorbikes to anywhere there is an accessible bit of shoreline.
Baxevanis said the Cattle Dog’s design made for a pretty tough boat.
“Because it is made from plastic, you can drop it on the ground and drag it to the water and apart from a few scratches, it won’t harm the hull,” he said.
“It also means you’ll be able to drive it up onto rocks to unload and you won’t punch a hole in it.”
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The design includes a drop-down ramp built into the bow that floats, meaning it can be used as a platform for divers to get in and out of the water as well as a means of loading and offloading cargo to shore.
The Cattle Dog range will be built with a maximum legally trailerable beam of 2.5 metres, with longer models with bigger payloads adding more buoyancy via larger diameter tubes.
The first build, a 5.0-metre version, should be on the water within a month, with plans to fit it with a 40hp outboard engine for trials, although it should be suitable for engines of up to 50hp.
Pricing? That’s not yet locked in, Baxevanis said, but he expected the 5.0-metre version to come in somewhere around $20,000.
More information about the Cattle Dog range is available from Impact Boats, tel: (03) 7023 6759.
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