This is a short version:

For those who don’t have the time to watch the longer version 😀

Why compare a portable boat with amphibious boats?

The title “S4 Portable Boat vs Amphibious Boat” may be confusing to some readers, since Portable Boats and Amphibious Boats are two very different categories in the market for fishing boats, and it wouldn’t have occurred to us to write an article comparing them if not for a review that an S4 Microskiff angler from Cape Cod had contributed to our website, in which he rightfully compared the two, based on his own experience and the experience of his neighbors who own amphibious boats.

Definitions

Portable Boat –

Portable boats are inexpensive, small-size, open cockpit, lightweight craft that require using neither a trailer nor a dock for carrying, launching and beaching. A true portable boat can be car-topped and carried to the beach and from it by one person.

Amphibious Boat –

Amphibious boats are expensive, full-size motorboats equipped with built-in wheels that can be driven down a beach into the water, and up the beach to dry land. Some amphibious boats can be driven on roads like normal vehicles. Many amphibious boat models are Rigid-Inflatable Boats (RIB).

Advantages and disadvantages

1. Carrying Capacity: The smaller size of portable boats considerably limits the number of passengers that they can carry to typically to 1-2 users. Being bigger, amphibious boats can carry more passengers and gear onboard.

2. Speed: Typically, true portable boats are powered by a single, small portable gas outboard motor, or an electric motor, which limits their speed. Amphibious boats can go much faster.

3. Seaworthiness: A portable boat’s small size and open cockpit limits its seaworthiness, while RIB amphibious boats typically perform very well in rough seas. This said, thanks to its extreme stability for its size and the most effective balancing capabilities it offers to its passengers, the S4 Microskiff’s seaworthiness is comparable to the seaworthiness offered by amphibious boats that are not top-of-the line, namely smaller and non-RIB models.

4. Launching and Beaching: An extremely portable boat such as the S4 Microskiff is not limited to sandy or gently sloping beaches for launching and beaching. It can be launched and beached in extremely difficult spots, including rocky beaches and beaches that slope abruptly into the water. See “Launch Anywhere” video below. This is not the case with the bigger and heavier amphibious boats, since the size of their wheels (diameter and width) as well as the type of drive system they use (2 WD, 4WD, AWD) puts a significant limit on the type of beaches where they can be effectively launched and beached.

5. Transportation: A true portable boat such as the S4 Microskiff presents no limitation on its transportation, since one person can car-top it over any type of vehicle ranging from compact cars to large-size SUVs and vans. Similarly, any pickup truck can carry the S4 in its truck bed, providing it is outfitted with a T-extension. Practically, this means that that there is no limit on the distance that an S4 user can travel before or after using it. In comparison, most amphibious boats can be driven up and down a beach, but few offer the full ability to be driven on roads like regular vehicles, which means that users of amphibious boats are typically limited as far as the distance that they can travel on land, unless they tow their boat on a trailer.

6. Beachfront Property Boat: Portable boats take little storage space on one’s property, while amphibious boats ave a much bigger footprint on the property.  Additionally, portable boats can be dragged through narrow paths and passageways leading to the beach, while amphibious boats require better access.

7. Shallow Water Fishing: Both portable and small amphibious boats perform well in shallow water, but the S4 Microskiff performs better that all other boats since it can be human powered fully and easily, namely paddled with  kayak and canoe paddles. Even in absence of water, such as at low tide, an S4 never gets stranded since its user can get out of its cockpit and walk while using a rope to pull the S4 behind.

8. Boat Tender: Small dinghies, especially inflatable dinghies, are popular boat tenders. They can be conveniently hauled on board the mother ship or towed behind it, and they can be beached, if needed. These small craft can be propelled by either a small outboard or with oars, and typically they don’t have to cost much. In contrast, due to their size and cost, amphibious boats serve as boat tenders only for big and expensive yachts.

9. Versatility: The main advantage that portable boats have in terms of versatility is their small size, which offers manual propulsion to some extent, typically ranging from rowing clumsily to easy and effective kayaking and canoeing, both solo and in tandem, as is the case with the S4 Microskiff. Amphibious boats may very well be viewed as the versatile watercraft par excellence, since they can be driven both on water and over land.

10. Maintenance: Typically, portable boats require little to no maintenance, while amphibious boats are difficult and costly to maintain due to the complexity and cost of their drive systems and the fact that few mechanics specialize in them.

11. Cost: Most portable boats cost less than $10,000, while even an entry-level amphibious boat costs many times more.

Videos

1. Launch and Beach Anywhere

2. Easy car top –

PHOTOS

Carrying an S4 Microskiff Up The Beach –

The S4 powered by a surface drive (mud motor) –

More Reading

1. Recommendations For Making a DIY Wheel Cart For Carrying The S4 Microskiff
2. Ocean Kayak Fishing
3. Fishing in Shallow Water
4. The S4 is such a beautiful watercraft! By Vann Lam, Massachusetts
5. The S4 is awesome and perfect for cape cod bay By Mark Halvorsen, Massachusetts
6. The perfect boat tender: Wavewalk S4 in a dinghy roleBy Captain Larry Jarboe, Florida
7. Boat for waterfront property
8. Portable boats

 

 

By Mark Halvorsen

Massachusetts

The S4 is awesome and perfect for cape cod bay in Sandwich and Scorton Creek. As long as it’s a south wind, which it is most of the summer.
I didn’t get the Tohatsu on it until fall and cruised from the Canal to Barnstable along the beach and caught a few fall running blues [bluefish].
I plan on doing some fly fishing for striper this year, and I was really pleased with how stable it is to stand and fish. It’s really the ideal boat for me and East Sandwich beach.
A couple of guys have amphibious boats in front of their cottages but the S4 gets me on the water and on fish for $six figures less!

Your website and the blogs are great for ideas. I’ve built a dolly from an old sunfish dolly so I don’t have to drag it up the beach. I’m currently figuring out how to stow all my stuff and I’ve gotten some ideas that will work. I’m going to practice my riveting on an old kayak before I drill holes in my S4!

Do most people lay the fish finder transducer in the hull way in the stern? That’s what I thought I’d do.

What is the most stable kayak today?

After years on the market, the 38″ wide S4 Microskiff is still the world’s most stable kayak by far, although many fishing kayaks and tandem kayaks are much wider and bigger.

How is this extreme stability achieved?

The S4 Microskiff is a patented full twin-hull (“catamaran”) kayak and boat that features two wide hulls and a saddle-seat like which can be found in jet-skis, ATVs, snowmobiles and other extremely stable personal vehicles.
The S4’s twin-hull design allows for optimal distribution of its buoyancy (volume) along its sides where it the most effective in terms of supporting its passengers’ weight when they tilt sideways, and for countering the effect of waves hitting it on the broadside. In contrast to this stable design, ordinary kayaks feature a mono-hull whose buoyancy is distributed mostly along its center line, where it is ineffective as far as stabilization is concerned.

But this is not the only aspect of the S4’s design that contributes to its unmatched stability – Read more on this design for maximal stability »

About this video

This footage was shot on the S4’s first outing. We had expected it to be very stable, but it exceeded our expectations in the sense that it was so stable that we had to improvise completely new ways that would properly demonstrate its stability, because the crazy things we did with our previous kayak models nearly failed to make the S4 budge – It stayed almost indifferent to a big guy standing in its cockpit, jumping up and down, rocking from side to side, etc. The S4 delivered a new level of stability never seen before in kayaks, portable microskiffs, and other small craft.

Updated February 6, 2025

This article offers information about designing a simple, sturdy, and effective DIY wheel cart for the S4 Microskiff from inexpensive materials and parts that are available in hardware stores and online.

Do I need a wheel cart for carrying my microskiff or kayak?

Whether you need to carry your S4 with an outboard motor attached to it in a microskiff configuration, or without a motor, as a kayak / canoe,  you will need a wheel cart in case you’re prevented from simply dragging it on the ground.
You should avoid dragging your S4 over abrasive surfaces such as asphalt, concrete, and rocks, and you could drag it on sand, pebbles, gravel, dirt and grass, if there is no motor mounted on it and it’s not loaded with heavy gear.
However, with a 6 HP outboard motor mounted on your S4 and plenty of gear and fuel stored in its hulls, you will most probably need a wheel cart.
There are many wheel carts for canoes or large-size kayaks available on the market, at reasonable prices, but none fits the hulls of the S4, and most look like they’re not stable enough, and too flimsy to carry this boat with its motor mounted on it.
Most S4 owners build their own wheel cart from wood or aluminum, and this article offers one type of DIY solution among others.

Wheel cart parts

We suggest the following parts for such project:

1. A 42″ long 2×6 wooden board, preferably from pressure-treated (PT) pine.
2. Two 24″ long 2×4 wooden boards, preferably from PT pine*
3. Screws or bolts to attach the short boards to the main board
4. A pair of wheels
5. An axle that fits the wheels, and matching axle brackets**
6. Washers and cotter pins for the wheels
7. Eye bolts or eye screws for attaching straps to the ends of the small boards***
8. Regular straps for attaching the boat to the ends of the 2×4 boards. Do not use ratchet straps.

* Steel or aluminum tubes exposed to direct sunlight in the summer can become very hot and therefore require insulation before you attach a kayak or a small boat to them.
** It’s possible and it may be cheaper to use a short wheelbarrow axle on each end of the board instead of a single long axle along the entire board.
*** You can drill holes for attaching the straps instead of using hardware.

When possible, using stainless steel is preferable to regular steel, but in case you’re on a budget and you must use parts made from regular steel, you may want to spray a few coats of spar urethane on them. You should also coat the wooden parts with spar urethane or urethane lacquer such as sold in hardware store. You don’t have to waste your money on special urethane lacquers for boats, because the regular products sold in hardware stores are good enough.

How to build your wheel cart step by step

The wheels

The first and most important step is choosing the wheels for your wheel cart. In general, you want the wheels to be as big as possible, namely with the biggest diameter, because the bigger diameter the easier it is to go over obstacles such as rocks and tree roots. If you can’t find 20″ diameter replacement wheels for wheelbarrows at your local home improvement store, you can order them online. Such wheels would do well enough on asphalt, concrete, gravel, pebbles, grass and rocky surfaces, as well as in wood trails riddled with tree roots. This said, being relatively narrow, these wheels won’t work well in deep sand –
Deep sand is the most problematic terrain, because microskiff loaded with motor and gear is heavy, and the wheel cart carrying it will generate a lot of resistance from the sand. Carrying a loaded S4 down to the beach may not be hard, but carrying it back, up the beach could prove to be quite difficult. For this reason, if you’re planning to carry your S4 microksiff over sandy beaches, you need to outfit its wheel cart with wheels that are at least 6″ wide and 15″ in diameter. Such wheels are available online. Note that they tend to be heavy, so before you choose which ones you’ll order, try to find a pair that’s more lightweight.

Types of wheels –

The axle

Once you’ve chosen the wheels for your wheel cart, you can start looking for an axle for them. Be sure that the axle fits the internal diameter of your wheels, and that it’s long enough to protrude on both sides of the main plank, including room for the cotter pins and washers. Stainless steel tubes are sold online, in case you can’t find one locally.

Assembly

We won’t go into the details of the assembly, since the process is pretty straightforward, but here are a few things worth consideration –

The 2×4 vertical wooden boards

The purpose of the vertical 2×4 boards is to keep the boat in place and prevent the wheel cart from turning sideways if one wheel bumps into an obstacle. In case you’re planning to carry your S4 microskiff along narrow paths and you’re concerned about the overall width of your wheel cart, you can attach the 2×4 vertical boards to the middle part of the main board, so that they would fit in the space between the S4 hulls.  Doing this would save you 4 inches in total, but it could make attaching the boat to the wheel cart a bit tricky.
Try to build strong, and make sure there are no metal parts such as screws, bolts and brackets that protrude in a way that could make them scratch your boat.

The wheels

You may want to apply several coats of spar urethane on the wheels’ metal parts, in case they feature such parts.

Don’t forget to grease the wheels!

Onboard storage of your wheel cart

Such wheel cart is both bulky and heavy, and there are two approaches for storing it onboard in case you want to –
The first is to attach it firmly across the cockpit or the casting platform, and the second is to dismount the wheels and store them inside the hulls, and do the same with the wooden board. Both solutions work well since storing heavy payload in the front of a microskiff helps keeping its bow down thus improves its trim.
Whether you choose one solution or the other, make sure to secure everything properly, so that it won’t get lost or disturb you when you drive, fish, etc. The front of the S4 offers strong and convenient molded-in attachment points under the casting platform, and you can also add eyelets or other types of brackets there, or simply drill holes in the coaming.

More info on Noah’s wheel cart for carrying an S4 kayak in mountain trails »

In this article we attempted to summarize the knowledge we’ve accumulated over two decades of using wheel carts for our own kayaks and microskiffs, as well as the knowledge we obtained through inputs from Wavewalk kayak and microskiff owners who’ve created wheel carts according to their specific needs.
Our website’s S4 Reviews and W720 Reviews pages feature links to dozens of clients’ reviews that include photos and info on their DIY wheel carts.
Additional info is available in dozens of technical articles listed on our website’s Directory of Articles page »

We’ll be happy to assist you with your wheel cart project. Please feel free to call, text or email us if you have questions.