Steel jon boat for dinghy?

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sammy999

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Does anyone use a steel jon boat for a dinghy or have any thoughts if one could work? We will be buying a 45' trawler soon and are trying to decide on a practical dinghy that won't get stolen. We would be cruising Florida and the Bahamas. I know most jon boats have the square bow, but was considering one with the Coast Guard bow.

Thanks!!
 
Never seen a steel john boat. But an aluminum john as a dink would probably be good.

If you're that certain your dink will get stolen perhaps you should make sure the big boat can be reasonably secure.

Or maybe move.
 
I got my facts wrong. the jon boats I am thinking of are aluminum and not steel. It would be maybe 12' and be similar to what people use for fishing on rivers and lakes which do not have the inflatable tubes. I was just wondering how they would hold up in salt water and if they are as safe as a traditional RIB. Sorry for the confusion. Thanks!
 
OK good.
You'd be hard pressed to find a lighter dinghy that will gracefully hold 3 people. It should be close to 100lbs depending on the beam. Some fenders on the corners will make it more user friendly. Should make a good dink.
 
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I would think a aluminum Jon boat would be the easiest to steal.
 
Would not be the ideal boat for snorkeling or diving. Tough having to crawl over that metal side. Much easier to crawl across the nice soft rubber tubes of an inflatable.

Bob
 
I have thought of this too. Owned a 6 foot by 16 Jon. I looked over the offerings and an all welded 12 footer stood out, it has a 42 inch width floor. The wider the better the most stable, do not even think about a 12' by 36". I think it was an alweld. The narrow ones have problems in waves.
 
I have an aluminum jonboat,12' wide-and-a-half. Width for jonboats uses similar terms as house trailers: single wide, wide and a half, double wide. Mine has a 8hp two stroke merc and runs super with one or two on board. I'm at 175# and no way can I climb in in deep water over the side. It would roll it. I also have a 8' inflatable dink with 2hp. I can slither over the side of it. Way more stable. Also I often tow my dink, and have towed the jonboat behind the 38'. Towing will destroy the jonboat. It also has metal corners that must be fendered off the 38. The dink needs no fenders. It IS a fender. Also, it seems to tolerate most towing conditions ok, unless rough enough to flip, which I have done twice. I've towed it at 7 to 18kts a total of about 5000 miles.

Rubber donuts all the way!!!

Jonboats are awesome, and I will have them as long as I am able. But not as good as an inflatble for dink service.

My present jb is 13yrs old, and has been in the saltwater 95% of that. Some minor corrosion issues, some broken ribs, but still kickin.
 
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Jonboats are hell in a chop. That flat bottom will have you at your chiropractor's office for many visits after you've spent a day riding around in one.

Turn your question around and look at it from this angle....

If they were any good for a dinghy, wouldn't more people be using them?
 
Most people use inflatables for dinghys. There are good reasons for this. More stable, less apt to ding up the big boat, etc. A metal jon boat could be used a a dingy if you wish but think about the disadvantages before you go out and buy one.

If you are concerned about theft, give some thought to securing the dinghy when not in use.
 
ben2go said:
Check these two out.I think they will fit the request.I agree with having a wider hull.I am very familiar with J boats.

12' x 54" beam Launch 12 Aluminum V Hull Boat

12' x 56" beam Polar 12 Aluminum V Hull Boat
Click to expand...

Thanks...looks good. Can a 250 pounder get into it from the water would be my question.

Aluminum boats are cheap, almost indestructible. As a wise man said, if they were so good more people would be using them. I dropped my 12ft HBI off for some work and looked at an = HBI, new with an alum hull. As I recall, $20k + with a 25 Yamaha. Compare that to the alum ones featured. Trawler folks are smart, many are so tight when they smile they skin it back. Still see few alum dinghys out there, must be a reason.
 
Short of having a catastrophic double tube failure, you can't sink a dinghy. Not so with a jon boat. They can be swamped pretty easily if you get in some rough stuff.
 
On the theft issue
I went to West, spooled off 20-30 feet of the heaviest plastic covered lifeline, swaged loops on both ends. Have 2 matched locks. I weave this stuff through every hole on the boat, motor, dock if available. No dock, wrap the engine., make the boat as hard to deal with as possible locked down. This stuff coils up well, makes it easy to stow.
Like 2 people running from the bear..."think you can out run the bear?" " No but I can out run you." Make ur boat harder to steal than the other guy's.
 
Mule said:
On the theft issue
I went to West, spooled off 20-30 feet of the heaviest plastic covered lifeline, swaged loops on both ends. Have 2 matched locks. I weave this stuff through every hole on the boat, motor, dock if available. No dock, wrap the engine., make the boat as hard to deal with as possible locked down. This stuff coils up well, makes it easy to stow.
Click to expand...
I did the same but only about six feet. I have a separate one on the motor but my new dinghy doesn't have a place on the transom to attach a safety line from the motor. It's something I'm going to work on before next year.

I wouldn't do this to my dinghy, but another thing you can do to reduce the chance of theft is to make it look like a piece of junk. Put several patches on it. Scratch up the seat and transom or even spray paint them and let some overspray get on the tubes. Keep it as dirty as you can stand.

Did anyone mention taking the motor's safety lanyard with you when you leave it?
 
RW.....I am too vain, as you to trash my boat. I might be willing to leave a rattle snake in a basket though. May not be able to keep em from stealing it but can make em wish they had not.......
 
ronlord said:
Short of having a catastrophic double tube failure, you can't sink a dinghy. Not so with a jon boat. They can be swamped pretty easily if you get in some rough stuff.
Click to expand...

I don't think you can sink a Jon boat either. My dad bought one when I was 2-3 years old and he traded it to my grand father who lived on a lake. My cousin and I used that danged boat almost every day for years each summer. We seldom used it as a boat per say, since we would flip it upside down to make it a "submarine" and we would often fill it full of water. There were huge blocks of styrofoam under the three seats. The boat was unsinkable. That boat spent much of its on water time filled with water. If we wanted the water out we just flipped it on its side and most of the water drained out. Easy Peasy.

It did have a low free board but that made it easy to get into from the water. I don't think I would want the flat bow on a body of water with any waves though.

That Jon boat was decades old when I last saw it and still going strong. I often wonder what happened to that boat. We drove by the old lake house a few years ago but the new owners were not home to talk too. I really wanted to go in the back of the house to see if that Jon boat was still there...

Later,
Dan
 
dannc said:
I don't think you can sink a Jon boat either. My dad bought one when I was 2-3 years old and he traded it to my grand father who lived on a lake. My cousin and I used that danged boat almost every day for years each summer. We seldom used it as a boat per say, since we would flip it upside down to make it a "submarine" and we would often fill it full of water. There were huge blocks of styrofoam under the three seats. The boat was unsinkable. That boat spent much of its on water time filled with water. If we wanted the water out we just flipped it on its side and most of the water drained out. Easy Peasy.

It did have a low free board but that made it easy to get into from the water. I don't think I would want the flat bow on a body of water with any waves though.

That Jon boat was decades old when I last saw it and still going strong. I often wonder what happened to that boat. We drove by the old lake house a few years ago but the new owners were not home to talk too. I really wanted to go in the back of the house to see if that Jon boat was still there...

Later,
Dan
Click to expand...

Yes, I guess the correct wording should have been swamp, not sink. As a kid, I swamped a john boat going down a boat wake and she turned turtle real quick, engine under water and fish gear gone. Will never happen with an inflatable.
 
When I was 12 or 13 years old I was invited to cruise to the Bahamas on a large trawler type boat. It was equipped with two Alumicraft boats, a 16 and a 12. I was assigned the 12 footer and really had a blast with it. I even ran it between the hulls of the big catamaran that was in the movie Thunderball.

That said, I think an inflatable is a better choice today.
 
HopCar said:
...

That said, I think an inflatable is a better choice today.
Click to expand...

I suspect the inflatable is the best pick of a bunch of bad dingy choices. :blush:

They all seem to have issues that I really don't like.

  • An inflatable is, well inflatable, so it can loose air. This is good and bad.
  • The Jon boat/hard boat is never going to sink unless it is destroyed but you can't deflate it and store it forward either.
  • An inflatable is easily stolen because everyone has one and they all look the same while a jon boat, or some other hard boat, would stick out a bit more.
  • An inflatable will be sorta easier to climb into but a John boat is not bad but then you have a lower free board, like the inflatable, and more free board would be a bit nicer...
When we were on the trawler we want to buy, I kept finding myself stepping outside the pilot house to have a look around when I had the helm. I am too used to being able to look all around me on a boat and while the boat's pilot house has excellent visibility, I just had to stick my head out side for a looksey every once in awhile. What was driving me bonkers was the danged dingy handing off the stern. Now, almost every boat does this but it was impeding my view aft which I do NOT like. The only real solution I can see is to have a folding boat and/or move the boat forwards which is a PITA and creates other issues. :banghead:

Ya would think, something as simple as a dingy choice, would be, well, simple. :facepalm::D

Later,
Dan
 
ronlord said:
Short of having a catastrophic double tube failure, you can't sink a dinghy. Not so with a jon boat. They can be swamped pretty easily if you get in some rough stuff.
Click to expand...


All the J boats I been on and all I have owned have had floatation foam under the seats.I have been swamped by kids on jet skis many times and never had a J boat go to the bottom.They usual float with the gunnels about 6 to 8 inches above the water.That's enough for me and another person to bail out.I usually keep one of those manual bilge pumps in the boat that looks like a bicycle pump.
 
The inflatables have so much wasted space it's hard to believe anyone would buy one. But the thing that puts me off totally is how stupid they look.
 
An old Carolina Skiff is a better option than an aluminum boat. I have seen a variety of cruisers with them and they are very common here in the choppy waters of eastern NC. I think the reason you see a lot of inflatables and RIBS is they are very easy on the mothership, not to mention the herd mentality common to boaters. I found it interesting that Dashew used a metal tender with fenders all around it, much like the launches you see in mooring fields.

Our Whaler served as the family "SUV" when we were cruising and living on moorings or on the hook. It came with the boat and we considered replacing it with a RIB, but the loss of interior room was the deciding factor in staying with the Whaler, a decision we never regretted.
 
This might be my next dinghy. I've started building it. I'll let you know how it works in a couple of years when I finish it. The fellow in the video has solved the theft problem. He carries his folding bicycle to shore in the dinghy, then tows the dinghy behind his bicycle. I'm building the 9 foot version.
 

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A dinghy with training wheels! I've seen it all.

Some folks use a Porta-Bote as a dinghy. http://www.porta-bote.com/

I have one, it was my first boat. Setting it up is not quite as easy as they claim and it would be difficult to do on a boat's deck unless there was a pretty big clear space.

It would be fine if you could leave it set up and tow it. It's plastic so it won't damage the mother ship.

I used to take mine to a beach on the roof of my truck and set it up. I got lots of strange looks.
 
Hopcar,
I like that a lot. If stowed outside water would collect in the folds of the hull skin and grow green slime. Perhaps a cover or storage bag? Looks like it's intended for sitting yoga style.

A slightly bigger one w seats that didn't fold that also was 40lbs would be very attractive to me. I like the hull form a lot. It's what a dinghy should be like. FD and very full in the ends.

For me the dinghy question has come down to a crane .. or .. a canoe or a rubber duckie w/o the wood transom and wood seats. 32lbs. One could put in a plywood floor and board seats after the dink was launched. The canoe option will look strange/odd but w a 2hp OB cruise at 5 or 6 knots. The side windage would be unwelcome too but Willy's got a 3.5' full keel.
 
Eric, good suggestion on the cover. It's not limited to full displacement, that silly little thing will plane! You can also sail it.
The Fliptail folding dinghy

"rubber duckie w/o the wood transom and wood seats."
I like that as well. Add a detachable motor bracket for up to 3 HP, a high pressure inflatable floor, keep it under fifty pounds and I'll buy it.
 
Parks I'm looking at the Solstice in the WM on-line cat. 32lbs.

Has OB bracket for my 2hp Yamadog 2 stroke.

I hate duckies. This is temporary. Just cause it's 32lbs.
 
I looked at some folding dinghy designs, one was in the UK and has been in business for years and another one was here in NC. They seemed to work, are light and take up little space but they just did not look robust enough for me.

I used to see canoes with flat sterns to more easily mount a motor. A canoe is a good idea if it is the right kind of canoe but it would not be useful for diving.

Unfortunately, the conclusion I came too when looking at dinghies, is that like a trawler, there is no such thing as the perfect dinghy. :eek:

Later,
Dan
 
manyboats said:
Parks I'm looking at the Solstice in the WM on-line cat. 32lbs.

Has OB bracket for my 2hp Yamadog 2 stroke.
Click to expand...

A friend bought one of those and when he gave the Honda 2HP motor a little power the transom and bracket folded under. He sold it within a few weeks and bought a different dinghy with a wooden transom.

Just FYI.
 
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