SabresfortheCup wrote:
TAMUmpower, you've never seen a Hobie tramp? That's a shame, the Hobie tramps are definitely high quality! Mine is decades old, and (aside from some fading) still looks like new! I can't imagine any aftermarket tramp lasting nearly as long. If Hobie still made them in color, I'd definitely look to replace mine with an OEM tramp when mine does eventually give out. Unfortunately, I'm not too fond of a white trampoline on a white boat, and that's the only "color" of vinyl trampoline still made by Hobie for the 18's, so I'm not sure what I'll do. All I know is that I'll be taking the best possible care of my tramp until I have to make that call!
Not knocking hobie but they arent a vinyl or thread manufacturing company so any materials that are presumed to be special high quality are not exclusive to the Hobie brand anyway. I don't know labor wise if they actually make the tramps but the sails back in the day were made by multiple lofts so saying hobie sails were high quality didnt even make sense as you were basically complimenting other peoples work as well.
Realistically a tramp is a very simple item to manufacture. I actually made my own currently and would throw it up against any other tramp from a durability stand point. I'm not a fan of the vinyl tramps, but prefer trampoline mesh. You can buy enough for 2-3 tramps for like 50 bucks. The tramps that don't last from what I've seen are usually made without reinforcement webbing around grommets, the edges arent rolled, or in a lot of cases the thread is lower quality and UV just breaks it down. That being said sewing on new thread wouldn't take long, and given how long tramp material is UV stable for I could probably use the same tramp I made for the rest of the life of the boat if I wanted to by just re-sewing thread when/if needed.