Designing, testing and refining our boats in New Zealand gives us an extra edge. There’s a whole industry here that’s dedicated to getting the best out of boats, whether that’s the innovative breakthroughs we’ve brought to competitive yachting or creating the world’s first jet boat back in the 1950s. If it goes out on the water, kiwis are going to find a way to improve it.
True Kit’s owner and innovation visionary, Rod Dawson, is no exception. His background in competitive sailing and lifelong love of the sea are the driving forces behind True Kit’s quest to be the best. Supporting Rod is a full team of boating enthusiasts who bring a wealth of experience to True Kit’s in-house design and testing program.
To achieve this, every detail of a True Kit boat is rigorously evaluated, from the designs to the materials we specify. No aspect of the boat’s creation is ignored in our determination to deliver the best experience possible.
Literally thousands of hours have been spent perfecting our designs, testing materials and then proving our ideas out on the water. We do this so we can live up to our promise:
THE BEST INFLATABLE BOAT MONEY CAN BUY
Our class-leading Discovery boats are at the leading-edge of inflatable boat design. And this design pedigree, while brought to its ultimate realisation in the Discovery, can be found in True Kit’s entire range.
Our belief that every element of a True Kit boat is critical to the final outcome lies behind every decision we make. This can be seen in the smallest design detail, like the rubbing strip that forces splashing water down instead over and into the boat and in our decision to weld not glue the seams on our boats, creating an unbreakable bond that’s equal to the premium German fabric we use.
The Discovery’s landing craft bow is an immediately recognisable and important feature of the boat. Unlike a conventional bow, this design ensures that swimmers can exit and return to the boat easily. The bow shape also makes boarding from your yacht, launch or the dock much safer. The stability of our catamaran design helps here too, you can see how easy it is to board a Discovery in this video.
True Kit conducted extensive sea trials of the landing craft bow to ensure that it was capable of handling rough conditions. A combination of the boat’s buoyancy, the wave riding action of the catamaran design and the upsweep of the bow (Dry-ride design) resulted in performance characteristics that were at least equal to a conventional bow. In this video you can see a Discovery being put through its paces. In this trial, Rod Dawson set out to demonstrate the boat’s capabilities by deliberately swamping it. This proved to be very difficult to achieve as the Discovery effortlessly rode up and over waves coming in from multiple directions.
Our in-house design team started with a clean sheet of paper. We have created an incredibly stiff, lightweight structure using unique shapes and quality materials. The triple fold provides strength and direct power transfer from the engine to the boat while also being very light. The whole transom is finished to super yacht level with the AkzoNobel powercoat system.
Leading edge design and engineering has gone into every aspect including our exclusive transom wheel system. The unique one-click removal system along with the premium quality stainless construction provides True Kit owners with a serious advantage getting in and out of the water.
True Kit’s Discovery unique transom design performs two important tasks. It’s lightweight and yet incredibly stiff to provide vital integrity to the boat’s shape and rigidity in rough seas. The transom also features the RapidDrain scupper system - a laser cut grate that quickly jettisons any water that gets into the boat.
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