Whitewater rafting is a highly adventurous game played on the wildest rivers of the world. Rocky Mountain States, Northern New England, and the Southeast Rivers are excellent spot for river rafting. In this exciting sport one joins a party of eight or more like-minded adventurers under the care of a guide. Players are equipped with life jackets, helmets, and knee pads and the entire group boards an inflatable raft that resembles a huge, poorly inflated soft-tail dinghy. After boarding, they shove off for a terror-filled hour or so of hysterical screaming, repeated drenching in ice-cold water, and bone-jarring leaps and plunges that are very thrilling. After miles of down streaming players come up with sodden clothing, shaky legs, and Cheshire-cat grins of pride and accomplishment.

Whitewater enthusiasts often take inflatable boats into waters canoes as inflatables open up areas that are just too wild for the more traditional craft. Avon, Achilles, and several others make small whitewater riverboats designed for up to four paddlers, and inflatable kayaks work well in less intense rapids and rivers.

If you are using your inflatable boat in rapids, be aware that you're exposing it to dangers. Fast-moving waters are often full of sharp rocks and snags and they can tear the inflation chamber or rip the fabric bottom. A single trip can craft more abrasions as compared to a year or so of lake or ocean. It is difficult to avoid scraping against boulders and dragging across sandbars and rock-strewn bottoms. You can use your sport boat or soft tail in milder rivers and rapids easily if you are choosing your water prudently.

If one launches the sportboat a bit underinflated so that the only hard part is the transom, it will be protected by the stern tube extensions. If you sit on the bow with a long paddle and steer with your kids and spouse be sited on the side tubes with shorter paddles and propel the boat down the river backward. You must enjoy some exciting jaunts together on the water.

From the aptly named town of Fronteras, where the only bridge crosses the Rio Dulce, one can make a high speed run water stream to explore. If the trip seems longer one can hire a Cayuga-a big outboard-powered dugout canoe the natives use as a taxi. If one comes upon small rapids with water too swift and shallow to motor through its all about piling up in a single ice-cream.

If one reaches headwaters or upstream as far as one can go, one can stow the outboard in the up position, broke out the paddles, and drifted back downstream with the current. The river once drifting down is always different from the one motoring up-partly because of the different perspective. It's mostly because of the wonderful silence.

For the same reasons it's often recommended to use a conventional aluminum or fiberglass skiff, instead of a RIB in whitewater or shallow rivers. RIBS are superb motorboats, but keeping it under control with paddles can be impossible. Ribs can not respond to paddling and without this response one can not have control needed to stay in the channel and avoid obstacles.

There is one more interesting fact lying below the hard bottoms. They are more likely to be holed when hit by a rock or boulder. As compared to them fabric bottom of soft tails or sportboats sustain more pressure. Patching them in case of any emergency is also rather easy than punching a hole in a Rib.

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