Traveling without a dinghy

janice142 said:

That's the key... not only having a dinghy but being able to launch and retrieve with ease. If it's not easy, it won't be used.
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Whatever the choice for OP is, just know that if it's a pain in the transom to use your dinghy it won't be used.

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Couldn't agree more!

Here's the new home for my dinghy.

It's all a matter of how each person cruises. We almost never use a RIB to get to shore from anchoring. However, on an average six week cruise we use a RIB for exploration and fun 8-12 times. That would equate to somewhere between 20 and 40 engine hours on it and we'll cover between 300 and 800 nm. We might have a day we use it primarily to go from island to island so out all day but an hour of engine time and 10 miles covered. But then we've had the occasion of a 12 hour day, with 8 hours of engine time and 180 nm covered. It's our way of getting up close and personal with the places we visit.

Now, I have a good friend who doesn't carry or use a tender or dinghy, ever. He does rent Whaler's and similar quite often on trips to explore. If he goes to the Bahamas for 2 weeks, he'll have at least 4 days of boat rental.

BandB said:

A cardiologist who I respected once said that no one over 40 should own a manual starting outboard or lawn mower. A boat dealer I knew wouldn't sell them. The motion of pulling across your body, across your heart, is the reason. This discussion came about after my father's fatal heart attacks. He had spent the afternoon mulching leaves and hand starting a rather balky leaf mulcher.

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This is NOT a gotcha' reply, but I'm curious about the science behind this. A Google search with most combinations of "pull-starting" and "heart attacks" doesn't turn up much, if anything on it. I would think it would be more widely discussed if it were a significant risk.

I do understand your concern and sympathize with the loss of your father. Mine had his first heart attack (of 5 or 6) when he was 35 after shoveling snow. I haven't felt safe doing that ever since.

Codger2 said:

Couldn't agree more!

Here's the new home for my dinghy.

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Codger - when we finally do set up the dingy, I was thinking of the same location - aft deck roof. Doesn't that badly increase your windage though? As it is on a windy day we open all the eisenglass to minimize the sideways pushing. I'd love to use that same location, wasted space otherwise, but I'm afraid of turning the boat into even more of a sail than it already is.

As to the science of pull starting, I don't fully understand the science, but the part I picked up was that it was the pulling across the heart and strain from it. The concern is certainly anecdotal rather than something scientifically proved, but I've heard it from many in the field and from the EMT's to the doctors in the hospital to the coroner, they all reacted as if it was a very common association. I'm sure in most cases there were underlying conditions, not previously diagnosed, already there. My father had lifestyle factors that certainly could have contributed, but it happened immediately after pulling the cord on the mulcher.

kthoennes said:

Codger - when we finally do set up the dingy, I was thinking of the same location - aft deck roof. Doesn't that badly increase your windage though? .

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I can't answer that as it's the new owner's boat. It's a 46' Carver and it came with that mount on top. (I think!)

Panope said:

Eric, I was thinking the same thing about extra moorage fees so I welded up a pivoting davit. My marina charges by the 5 foot increment and with the dinghy pivoted inboard, Panope squeaks in at just under 35 feet. Note that the radar dome is positioned so that it also pivots inboard.

The pivots have UHMW bearings for effortless pivoting. Two drop pins keep it in place while under way. Takes just a few seconds to pivot and a few more to cast off the hoisting line to launch dinghy.

This is all just a variation of the old fashioned ship lifeboat davit. Something similar could be arranged for your Willard if you could stand having a big metal thing grafted on to your otherwise beautifully clutter free boat.

Steve

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STEVE YOU ARE THE MAN!!!

What a splendid design. Your's ?

Just started to look at it and already have a variation in mind. The mast standing on the port cap rail and the dink resting or not w 2/3rds of it over the cabin. Gotta show Chris. I'm really excited .. here is a solution that will really work well I think.

Here is the dinghy I want to use. It's 10' (an ex sail boat) And I'd like to manage it w the engine attached. Sixty lbs so it would be a 200lb package. Don't know if it's practical as it would be twice as heavy as yours. A good "crib" on the roof may allow the weight as it would be tied down underway.
I was beginning to think kayaks again .. one for each of us. But this opens the door to a light exploration class dinghy. Thanks dosn't seem adequate but I'm not up to big bucks or kisses. So THANKS!

Thanks, Eric. It is all my own concoction.

Strength wise, my set up is just adequate for my 72 lb. dinghy. I used 2 1/2" schedule 80 6061 Alum Pipe and it does flex a bit. Cantilever is only 2 feet horizontally and a similar amount in the vertical direction. Your proposal for a 200 lb. dinghy hoisted quite a bit higher will demand a larger pipe. I'm thinking 3 1/2" minimum.

Also, consider a rolly anchorage or a boat wake just as you are trying to pivot the whole apparatus. 200 lbs flopping around might get a little out of hand. Then again, your proposal to chock and secure the boat on the house top eliminates the need for that fancy curved channel thingamajig that I needed for mine.

The lower end of the pipe needs to bury into a lower pivot that is somewhat below (2 feet?) the upper pivot. Is there adequate clearance bellow the cap rail area that you have in mind?

Next time you are in Port Townsend, Shoot me a P.M. and I will at least help with the brainstorming.

Steve

Steve we don't often get over to PT. When's the Wooden Boat thing? That may be motivation. But I'm real keen on this kind of brainstorming
I think it could easily be done basically the way you've done it. Perhaps w my dink w/o engine and fuel. Just the boat is only about 10lbs heavier than yours. Then I'd power it w my 2hp Yamaha 2-stroke. It's significantly quieter than a Honda 2 but still noisy. My 6hp Johnson (70s vintage) or 8hp Yamaha are very quiet and smooth but weigh 60lbs. I may find another 3hp OMC twin. Chris could hand that (30lbs) down to me in the boat. Twin engined dinghy? ... Far Out. The nice thing about the 6hp+ is at half throttle engines don't make much noise at all. 6hp gives me 7 or 8 knots on the dink.

OK, time to clarify making the whole trip from FL to CT without the dinghy getting wet. Despite our best efforts, we got into a time crunch getting to CT to make an unavoidable plane trip back to Boca Raton of all places to attend a family event. We pushed hard, long days and were tired each night. No desire to explore, just wanting to get to bed for an early start the next day. The only breaks were for weather and no need for the dink in rain and wind.

My point was, that it can be done. As I stated, we would not be without the dink and use it all the time under normal circumstances.

Eric,

You should be fine with mounting/removing the outboard motor while the dinghy is in the water because once the davit tackle is freed from the dinghy, you now have the worlds greatest outboard motor crane. Pivoting davit is also good for general loading/unloading of heavy items from dock or dinghy. Could even be a lifesaver in a M.O.B. situation.

Steve

kthoennes said:

The weekend before the trip we bought a Zodiac Zoom at Defender, and a Yamaha 4-horse for it. Never used it, never inflated it. It stayed in its bag on the bow the whole trip.

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Sod`s law says if you had not bought the dinghy and o/b, you would have needed it, several times.

BruceK said:

Sod`s law says if you had not bought the dinghy and o/b, you would have needed it, several times.

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Ha! I'm sure you're right. I used to live on the Connecticut River (Chester) and so I wanted to show our guests Hamburg Cove when we went by. According to the chart and tide, I should have had just enough water. Nope. Ran gently aground in the mud but luckily eased back out into the river. Anyway, that was one time I wished we had the dingy, but not badly enough to go to the trouble to inflate it and deploy it.

The other factor was that the genset battery was dead so it wouldn't start. Since we insisted on being civilized with 110v electricity each evening, a mooring ball or anchoring out wouldn't have worked anyway - so one more reason we didn't use it. The boat will be delivered to our home marina next week and we expect to finally set up that dingy and we'll probably have lots of fun with it.

Understood, first unpack and inflate is time consuming, but you had one if you really needed it.
Side issue, I fitted a 25w solar panel with regulator, dedicated to the genset batt. A genset can go a while between starts.

A little thread drift I know, but that's a good suggestion. That's exactly the problem, the gen goes a long time between starts and the battery is isolated by itself, not connected to the charger, and a mile forward of the house and (engine) starting batteries so even jumper cables weren't practical. And I wasn't in the mood to fool with it during the trip because like the dingy, we didn't really need it badly enough to spend the time (and I didn't have a tester, and there were a pile of other items that took higher priority, like new bulbs for the nav lights, a new water inlet check valve/pressure regulator, relatively small things but more pressing).

Panope said:

You should be fine with mounting/removing the outboard motor while the dinghy is in the water because once the davit tackle is freed from the dinghy, you now have the worlds greatest outboard motor crane. Pivoting davit is also good for general loading/unloading of heavy items from dock or dinghy.

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Eric. I too am thinking about Steve's brilliant plan. I wondered at an extended U-bolt? The thought being to drill a couple holes through the gunnel of Algae, then shove the u-bolt around the support post and through the gunnel. A couple of wing nuts and the dink is held in place.

Can you (or anyone else) see anything wrong with that? (Saves the extend curved brace)

My gunnels have wood (inside and outside) as the dink was starting to warp out of shape. She's a 1972 fiberglass no-name dink. The wood along the sides gave her stability.

I would reinforce the gunnel on the dink where the u-bolt attaches.

I've got eyebolts through bolted mid-ship too on Algae. The eyes are inside so they won't gouge the boat. That's so when I bring her to Seaweed, I can snap on and she's snugged up against the real boat for unloading groceries and such. The snap is on a line from the cleat on the davit.

It's simply easier than having to tie up when I'm coming in. Snap. Done.

Is this too much thread drift?

"a new water inlet check valve/pressure regulator,"

These either die or require cleaning from minerals in the water.

Easiest to live with is the brass RV units with a pressure gauge .

These can be opened , the guts cleaned with a scotch brite pad and reassembeled in a couple of min.

Travel with out a dink? NEVER!

Off Duty said:

Oh no you didn't ! :lol:

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No we did not name it Tinker Belle That came from a post from Eric (Manyboats ) . Haven't named the dink yet but probably going to be Willy .

Marty,
Sorry about the "Tinker Belle". Couldn't remember the brand name Trinka so I winged it. Could have been a senior moment. And Willie is a fine name for the best dink of them all.

I used to live on the Connecticut River (Chester) and so I wanted to show our guests Hamburg Cove when we went by. According to the chart and tide, I should have had just enough water. Nope.

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The channel into Hamburg Cove has silted in? That's a shame; one of our favorite places to hang out for a few days. Never had an issue with 5 feet of draft, but it's been about five years since our last visit. Great place to launch the dinghy and explore up the creek to the cool, wooden boat oriented marina/yard and the little store up the hill, half doll shop and half grocery (wonder if she is still alive?). And Selden Creek and of course Essex and Deep River for town action.

Do advise you get the genset battery its own charger.

janice142 said:

Eric. I too am thinking about Steve's brilliant plan. I wondered at an extended U-bolt? The thought being to drill a couple holes through the gunnel of Algae, then shove the u-bolt around the support post and through the gunnel. A couple of wing nuts and the dink is held in place.

Can you (or anyone else) see anything wrong with that? (Saves the extend curved brace) ..............

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Janice, I think that the friction between the U-bolt and the support post will be insufficient to prevent the dinghy from pivoting as the mother-ship rocks back and forth. Your proposal would probably work fine if the davit remained free to rotate (use lines attached to bow and stern of dinghy to prevent unwanted pivoting).

Will you be taking advantage of the "L.O.A. shortening" that my pivoting davit provides? If not, then a conventional two arm davit might be better.

Lastly, if you are only using the davit as a way to get the dinghy up onto the house top (as Eric proposes), then I believe that it will not be necessary to affix the dinghy to the davit post at all.

Steve

Steve,
That was one of the reasons I was gravitating that way. The other was that the length of the boom would be less reducing weight or increasing the capacity of the lift. The boom probably would not need to rise or fall (just rotate) if designed carefully.
Your channel to gunnel arrangement dos'nt lend itself to home construction unless you're a welder.

Panope said:

Will you be taking advantage of the "L.O.A. shortening" that my pivoting davit provides? If not, then a conventional two arm davit might be better.

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This is my setup Steve:


I have a single post (Schedule 40, stainless) that sits atop (thru-booted) the transom, and goes through the overhead to support the wind generator.

The davit itself? I found that on the side of the road. Singular, but it was stainless. You understand right? Solid bars, hefty and beautiful. So I had Kidlet stop the car and retrieved same.

It's been welded on an overlapping pipe that rotates. Cleat rotates with davit.

I will not be shortening the boat. I simply want to get Algae up out of the water so I can stop scraping barnacles.

First Problem is equipment. I've got two blocks (both doubles, one with and one without a becket) and according to an engineer friend, he suggested I needed triples in order to get enough gain to lift the dink up. I have little strength...

Before I lay out cash for them though, I want to make sure they work. Unless I spot a pair at one of the marine swaps one day. It's on my list.

Usually when underway I simply raised the bow up out of the water by a couple feet, securing it with two lines (one inside on an eye-bolt, and the other the U-bolt on the outside)

Putting it across the swim deck is easy and works perfectly EXCEPT I could not get out of the water should I fall in. And so that's o-u-t. Safety and all that...

I could using marlinespike create a rope ladder however the one on the swim deck works great with three steps in the water. I like that thing.



Your system, with that piece on the upright? That looks like something that might be workable. When the welder is next door (they are doing a major overhaul -- my boat is spotted with rust stains everywhere) I'll ask what he thinks. But not until he's further along in his project.

You're a welder. You KNOW what a pain in the transom it is when folks interrupt your work with more work for you to do! Daddy was a welder and everybody is your pal when the torches are out. Sigh.

Timing...

And too Eric suggested something out of wood might work. I'm still pondering options. Yours though, well, it's spiffy.

Congratulations on a plan well executed.

caltexflanc said:

The channel into Hamburg Cove has silted in? That's a shame; one of our favorite places to hang out for a few days.

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Well, it was a very windy day and so I did drift outside the little red and green Clorox bottle markers a little, but I know when I was a teenager (early 80's) if I jumped out of my Blue Jay in that area I could just touch the bottom with my toes with my head still above water. A little tidal I know, but as I remember only a couple feet usually. Our boat draws 3' 7" and although we didn't run hard aground, we did touch bottom and I churned up a lot of mud easing out of there. Even when I got back to between the markers it was still way too shallow for comfort and so we gave up. We did a lot of the other things I love though, fond memory stuff -- tied up at the Goodspeed dock, lunch at the Gelston House, blew the horn at the Chester Ferry, waved to Gillette Castle (which my wife thinks is hideously ugly), stayed at Essex Island Marina, took the mini-ferry across the channel in Essex, dinner at the Gris. Funny, purely by accident we even sat at the same table as the table I had for my senior prom ("senior reception") for Valley Regional HS with Caroline Walsh (hello Caroline, wherever you are! Had a fantastic time!). I thought about staying at one of the Chester marinas for old time's sake but of course you need a car to go eat somewhere at those while in Essex you just stroll to the Gris. (And now I have the money to hang out in Essex too, at least for a day, ha!)

Sheesh, talk about thread drift. Okay, back to our regularly scheduled programming. Enough memory lane stuff.

bikeandboat said:

So, how many travel without a dinghy? Most of our travels will be on rivers and intercoastal, but a gulf crossing is always possible.

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The answer to your query about cruising without a dinghy lies in how you are going to be cruising. If you are going to be marina-hopping---- all your destinations will be docks attached to the shore--- then a dinghy will not be necessary. Note that "necessary," "advisable" and "beneficial" are three different concepts.

If you plan to anchor out, however, unless you are content with remaining on board your boat some means of conveyance to shore, docks, or other boats will be needed.

The previous posts contain all manner of good ideas on how to carry a dinghy, even if your boat is not set up for the obvious choices: swimstep mount, cabin-top mount, foredeck mount, transom mount. Foldboats, storeable inflatables, etc. can all be used to get around. Or, like a lot of boaters, a dinghy can be towed very successfully, particularly if your cruising is on inland or coastal waters.

Like most of the other posters, we find a shore/utility boat to be absolutely essential to our cruising. We anchor or tie up to mooring buoys far more than we go to docks.

Our boat--- as small as it is at 36'--- has two dinghies. The boat came with a lovely Montgomery rowing/sailing dinghy that sits in a cradle on the aft cabin top. It's a wonderful little boat to sail or row, but it's small and launching it with the mast and boom is a time-consuming process. It's also a tricky boat to get in and out of as like all traditional-style sailing dinghies it has a round bottom and so is pretty "tippy."

So within a few months of buying the cruiser we added a very stable hardshell dinghy using Weaver davits on the swimstep. This dinghy is immensely stable and pretty much indestructible (we don't like fabric dinghies because they have finite lives).

We use it for transportation to and from shore, for setting crab traps, fishing, you name it. For the crusing we do in the waters we do it in, I cannot imagine not having a rugged, stable shoreboat aboard.

Our boat is the outboard boat in the photo.

Janice, Thanks for posting the pictures, that clarifies your situation.

That's great the way your davit/windgen pole passes through the cabin roof. Nice and strong.

Here is an idea: How about mounting a couple of wooden "chocks" to Seaweed's gunnel. One on either side of your davit say, about 4 feet apart. Make them so that Algae's gunnel fits or otherwise is secured to them. The davit will still be carrying most of Algae's weight. Make these chocks high enough so that your ladder/swimstep can still be used in case of M.O.B (W.O.B). It would mean that you would be lying on the swimstep under Algae but at least you will still be alive. Perhaps you will be able to worm your way back aboard Seaweed if you position the chock (that corresponds to the bow of algae) far enough inboard.

And for anyone who stores a dingy in their davits, don't forget to drill a hole in the low point of the hull as a heavy rain downpour will quickly turn your davits into a pretzel.

Steve

Panope said:

And for anyone who stores a dingy in their davits, don't forget to drill a hole in the low point of the hull as a heavy rain downpour will quickly turn your davits into a pretzel.

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Good point! As noted in a previous post, I sold my dinghy. The photo of the boat is with the dinghy in its cradle. (slightly bow down.) The second photo is a snap shot from the video showing us launching the dinghy. Note the extreme pitching down of the bow when the boat clears the cradle. We all thought that the OP really screwed up when he made the sling. The real reason the bow pitched down is that the dinghy had collected rain water over the years and we estimated that we drained about 20-30 gallons of water out of it. The water was under the floor in the "V" of the hull and could not be seen on a casual inspection of the boat in the cradle.

I am very surprised that there are dinghies made that don't have bilge drains installed by the manufacturer. Our Livingston has them (two, actually, one for each "hull"), Bullfrog's have them, our sailing/rowing dinghy has them, most of the RIBs I've looked at have them, etc. We wouldn't buy a dinghy that didn't have one, particularly in our rainy part of the world.

For dinghies carried upright so they can collect water, it should be a simple matter to carry it in such a way that any water that gets inside runs back to the bilge drain which is simply left open until the boat's going to be used.

In the case of dinghies carried upright on davits, it's just a matter of carrying it slightly tilted toward the drain. In the photo in my post #85 you can see the slight aft-down angle of my friend's Bullfrog.

The only people I've ever encountered who have problems with rainwater collecting in their dinghies are the folks who leave them in the water beside their boats in the slip.

Marin, Unlike their motorized (planing type) brethren, I believe that most rowing dinghys do not have drain plugs because their transoms are well above the lowest point of the boat. And even if part of the transom did extend low enough, No oarsman can row fast enough to drain while under way.

My Walkerbay dink did not come with a drain and even if it did, It would likely have been in the wrong place given the weird stowage angle dictated by my unique situation.

Steve

Marin said:

I am very surprised that there are dinghies made that don't have bilge drains installed by the manufacturer.

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I would suggest that dinghy drains be equipped so that the water can be used for something else. It's fresh water, after all.

On Algae, I keep her scrupulously clean in the summer thunder-boomer weather. Her pump goes through a filter and then into the water tank. If I were larger (bigger boat) I'd have it pumped into a separate tank for other uses.

Aside: Algae is 7' long and a plain old fiberglass dink. To the seats is 50 gallons. Filled, she holds 100 gallons of water. That's a lot if you like showers as much as I do. Of course my hair is half-way down my back so washing the hair is important to my happiness quotient.

I'd tried to figure out a way to use a spigot of sorts with a hose fitting. Haven't quite moved that to the front burner. Yet.

Aside for Ready2Go: The tarp I have for my bow has a plastic thru-hull attached. Thus, when it rains, I can screw on a hose and fill the tank with all that water. Not sure if your set-up could do something similar but there you have it. An idea since you have nothing else to do.

Dinghy's have a lot of uses.