Workable Dinghy options for pocket trawler?

[pzindy]

What are they?

I just found the https://daydreamsloop.blogspot.com/2017/01/ blog about a couple that recently completed the great loop in a C-Dory 25. Their dinghy was a Sea Eagle FT385 inflatable kayak.

I would like to do the great loop 'someday', but in the meantime some shorter river cruising on the Illinois and/or Upper Mississippi is appealing.

No boat yet, but some of them on my short list are:
Ranger R-25 (classic)
Ranger R-27
Rosborough RF-246
C-Dory 25
Albin 25

So, I used to think a small outboard was a requirement on a dinghy, but maybe "oar power" is acceptable? pros and cons of both?

Where do you stow a dinghy on such a small boat?

Are davits workable when the parent boat has outboard power?

If your dinghy is 9' (or even 10') long, and your beam is 8.5', and on davits, could you still get through locks safely?

Can you get a crane on a 25 ft boat to get dinghy on roof?


I was not sure if this should be here or in the "dinghy section". But I would like to hear how others have made a dinghy work on a smaller trawler.

 

[AlaskaProf]

Keep it simple! I have a variety of hard and soft craft up to 20hp on my current 41 foot trawler, but in the years when I had 22' to 31' sailboats, I found a plywood-floored 8 foot Achilles with oars to be quite adequate. Tows nicely and can be dragged on deck for long or exposed legs. Needs no apparatus.

Remember in your pocket trawler, you can use anchorages and docks, even beaches not available to bigger boats to minimize the rowing.

 

[tego]

If you like to get wet, a kayak can work. I have a Sea Eagle 385, but I'd ,never use it as a dinghy. I've seen several Rangers with light cranes to get a lightweight small dinghy onto their roof, and a couple of Albin 25' have them, but these dinks are all 8' or less in length. A 9' or 10' will be a tow. You should never strap a dink that's longer than your beam onto davits 'cause eventually, it'll get ripped off by crappy seas or a dock piling. Oar power is great with some hard dinks but inflatables are tough to row. I use a Dyer Dhow (9') as my primary dink on my 27' Albin with davits. I love this dink (had it for about 35 years and several thousand cruising miles on my bigger boats) as it rows great. With the new propane kickers, I'd probably get one for any inflatable though. You probably can't use davits with an outboard mothership. WAY too much weight aft on a boat like you're considering. Our pocket cruisers are great, but you've got to use your imagination if you're going to cruise for long distances. Ben

 

[OldDan1943]

A deflatable 8ft dingy, to lay flat on your roof, a 3-5 hp motor is far better than oars against the tide. current or waves. You wont go fast but you wont have a heart attack trying to row your dingy against a tide.
Bring your wet dry vacuum to inflate your dingy when you need it.
Towing a dingy will just give yo something else to worry about.

 

[Waterford]

This doesn't address your dinghy question, but here's an interesting boat that you might consider too.
Trawlers Midwest

 

[FlyWright]

Keep it simple! I have a variety of hard and soft craft up to 20hp on my current 41 foot trawler, but in the years when I had 22' to 31' sailboats, I found a plywood-floored 8 foot Achilles with oars to be quite adequate. Tows nicely and can be dragged on deck for long or exposed legs. Needs no apparatus.

Remember in your pocket trawler, you can use anchorages and docks, even beaches not available to bigger boats to minimize the rowing.

I agree...keep it simple. No electric motors or extravagant appendages needed with a small dink.

I have a 9.5 ft Achilles dink with 15 inch tubes and a wooden floor that rests on my swimstep during cruising season and on the bow in foam chocks during fishing season. It weighs a bit over 100 Lbs dry. If need be, it can be deflated and stowed in its bag in the laz.

You can always add a 2HP 4-stroke Honda air cooled OB at 27 lbs. Easy to lift and store on a rail with a mount. It's got a self-contained 1-QT gas tank that provides about an hour's fuel at WOT 5MPH. I started with one and loved it. I still carry it aboard for short trips to shore or another boat. I prefer my Mercury 2-stroke which weighs in at 77 Lbs for faster/longer trips.

I recently added a Garhauer lifting davit to lift a larger motor and it also assists in hoisting the dink onto the swimstep. When it's not needed, it collapses easily to store in the laz. Here's a link to the thead.

http://www.trawlerforum.com/forums/s24/34-lrc-motor-lifting-davit-transom-mount-32080.html

 

[JLD]

There is a very active forum of Ranger Tugs folks at The TugNuts Home

I know that there has been several threads there on dinghy options.

As the tugnuts forum is moderated by Ranger Tugs, if you sign up (free) they will even send you a Ranger Tugs hat

The C-Dory folks also have a pretty active forum at The C-Brats Home and have also had a couple of threads on dinghys.

Jim

 

[AKDoug]

I use a 9' Achilles with an air floor, and have a high speed inflator/deflator pump that moves 20 cubic feet a minute (purchased for an Avon 13' I used to have). The 12V pump uses the same connector as my pot puller and my LED flood and spot/flood bar so I can use the pump in several different locations on the boat easily.

It fills the sponsons to 3 psi (maxed out) and fills the floor that has to be pumped up to get it rigid. It also fills my inflatable SUP which also has to be topped off by hand pumping. I use the ISUP as a kayak and as my primary tender, the Achilles gets used in tidal flows and when kids and clumsy/not mobile people are on board.

Here the motor is a must have if you anchor in tidal flows or want to run up into streams with flow. I have a 6hp Tohatsu for the Achilles, but often row if not in a flow.... Multiple solutions, all of them deflate for storage. Someday I may actually stand up on the ISUP, but for now I have a seat and a kayak paddle.

 

[kthoennes]

We had that SeaEagle model for a couple months with our previous boat. I thought we'd take the low-tech, low-cost approach. Nope. Didn't work. Wet, tippy and awkward to climb into from the swim step, didn't take a motor of course so everything was paddle. My back and legs just can't tolerate a kayak posture for any length of time. One night we finally gave up and swam to shore towing our little dog riding alone in the kayak, like Cleopatra on her river barge, and that sealed the decision for us. We sold the SeaEagle for $75.

Now we have a Zodiac Zoom Aero 260 from Defender on sale. Honda 4hp motor. Great little setup and with a used motor we probably did the whole thing for about $1000. Well, then we added registration number boards, a good canvas rain cover so we could keep it moored to the swim step cleats without rain filling the dingy; stern and bow lights for night runs. Little spare gas tank just in case. Dingy bag. The very stiff air floor and keel make it pretty comfortable unless it's rough. Now I do wish we had gone with the 310, just a little bigger but the 260 will do for now. And the 310 is just heavier enough that it would probably be a bear to hoist over the bow rail, which is where we carry our dingy for long runs.

 

[Conrad]

This worked on our Albin 25, although we often towed. That's an 8 foot Walker Bay on Weaver Davits.

 

[Sailor of Fortune]

Check out Phil Bolger designed "Ruebens Nymph". 8' LOA, 5' beam. Easily built out of 1/4' Plywood and glass. Very light and versatile.

 

[Carriage Guy]

I've seen several Atkins & Hoyle 3000R davit setups on Rosboroughs, usually used when the boat has the cockpit hardtop which give a large flat roof for storage. Nick Jackson also makes a simple small pipe davit. Both of these davits are pricey however, about the cost of a new dinghy itself.

 

[ranger58sb]

What are they?

But I would like to hear how others have made a dinghy work on a smaller trawler.

Can't give you much in the way of answers, but it sounds like you're approaching the problem correctly. I've found "a dinghy" is really a system of stuff that lets you get off the bigger boat for various reasons, ideally staying pretty dry as you do it.

The system includes the dinghy itself, propulsion method, storage and transport method (including towing), lifting mechanisms (including muscle power), the steering mechanism, and so forth. Propulsion method can be a whole system of itself (e.g., outboard, fuel tank, starting battery, charging mechanisms, etc.... or maybe just oars and oarlocks) and the other categories can also be made up of several components...

And then each of the basic categories of dinghy candidate (air-floor inflatable, roll-up or slat-floor inflatable, RIB, hard, kayak, canoe, Porta-Bote, whatever) all come with pros and cons... and the pros and cons vary with influences from the big boat...

There! I just had to get all that off my chest!!

Anyway, FWIW, I've never been able to sort out all the details until having the big boat squared away, i.e., with some experience on that first.

I can tell you we used a roll-up inflatable with a small gas outboard when we had a smaller big boat... sometimes deflated and stowed in its bag, sometimes inflated and upside down on the foredeck, very occasionally towed... and it worked OK. And air-floor inflatable would have been lighter, easier to unroll/roll/stow, and we could have used a longer model for the same or less weight. Ours wouldn't row great, nor would an air-floor version of the same row any better... but rowing works in a pinch. I just muscled the outboard onto or off the dink when necessary, but some kind of lifting help (like a movable St. Croix crane) would probably have been easier/safer.

Most importantly, maybe: we just accepted the limitations of our system. Small outboard on in inflatable, no high speed long distance trips. Oh, well, not to worry, we got over that. (But now that we can, we have a RIB with a larger outboard.)

-Chris

 

[boathealer]

I built a B&B (B&B Yacht Designs |) Spindrift N10 nesting dinghy some years ago that was a really great design and dinghy.

Each section weighed about 35lbs. There is also a 9ft version.

The photos of my build is used on the web site under "Nesting Option" at Spindrift | B&B Yacht Designs

Sailing parts are optional, obviously.....

 

[cardude01]

I agree...keep it simple. No electric motors or extravagant appendages needed with a small dink.

I have a 9.5 ft Achilles dink with 15 inch tubes and a wooden floor that rests on my swimstep during cruising season and on the bow in foam chocks during fishing season. It weighs a bit over 100 Lbs dry. If need be, it can be deflated and stowed in its bag in the laz.

You can always add a 2HP 4-stroke Honda air cooled OB at 27 lbs. Easy to lift and store on a rail with a mount. It's got a self-contained 1-QT gas tank that provides about an hour's fuel at WOT 5MPH. I started with one and loved it. I still carry it aboard for short trips to shore or another boat. I prefer my Mercury 2-stroke which weighs in at 77 Lbs for faster/longer trips.

I recently added a Garhauer lifting davit to lift a larger motor and it also assists in hoisting the dink onto the swimstep. When it's not needed, it collapses easily to store in the laz. Here's a link to the thead.

http://www.trawlerforum.com/forums/s24/34-lrc-motor-lifting-davit-transom-mount-32080.html

How do you like your lifting davit? I just upgraded to a heavier outboard and also bought a Garhauer lifting davit but haven’t installed it yet. Was the installation straightforward ?

Edit:nevermind— just read your install thread. Thanks.

 

[RCook]

We cruised many years in a 26-footer. Dinghy was a ~9.5 foot Avon Redcrest, hypalon, totally rollup (no slats), and only 40 lb. Kept in the cockpit, sitting on the engine box. 10-15 minutes to inflate with the Avon foot pump, rig and launch.

We had a 22lb 2hp 2-cycle Mariner (Yamaha) outboard, but often just rowed, especially if we were not going very far. Rowing is far better with a good pair of oars - the ones that come with small dinghies are generally poor to awful. We got a pair of 6.5 foot Sawyers. Having the choice of power or rowing is nice.

It's nice to have a dinghy so light that you can easily carry it above high water for shore excursions.

 

[Sabre602]

Just a few nights ago a couple were buzzing along in the marina in their Porta-Bote dinghy and tiny outboard.

I had a hard bottom dinghy for years and never had an outboard for it. Oars are cheap, light, easily stored, require no fuel, almost no maintenance and will never break down.

 

[LowNSlow77]

What are they?

I just found the https://daydreamsloop.blogspot.com/2017/01/ blog about a couple that recently completed the great loop in a C-Dory 25. Their dinghy was a Sea Eagle FT385 inflatable kayak.

I would like to do the great loop 'someday', but in the meantime some shorter river cruising on the Illinois and/or Upper Mississippi is appealing.

No boat yet, but some of them on my short list are:
Ranger R-25 (classic)
Ranger R-27
Rosborough RF-246
C-Dory 25
Albin 25

So, I used to think a small outboard was a requirement on a dinghy, but maybe "oar power" is acceptable? pros and cons of both?

Where do you stow a dinghy on such a small boat?

Are davits workable when the parent boat has outboard power?

If your dinghy is 9' (or even 10') long, and your beam is 8.5', and on davits, could you still get through locks safely?

Can you get a crane on a 25 ft boat to get dinghy on roof?


I was not sure if this should be here or in the "dinghy section". But I would like to hear how others have made a dinghy work on a smaller trawler.

I have no personal experience with a dinghy on a small boat, but I do remember reading about one woman's solution to the problem for her Albin 25. Here is the link to her blog:

The Adventures of Shatoosh and Pashmina: projects

Hopefully that is helpful to you.

 

[ssobol]

I have a C-dory 22 Cruiser. I also have a 9' inflatable PVC dinghy. Like previously mentioned, I blow it up when I need it and deflate it when I don't. It gets stored in a covered plastic bin which has the added bonus of keeping the dinghy out of the sun when not used.

However, with a smaller boat like a C-Dory, you get get a to lot more places in the main boat than you might in a larger boat. This can relieve the need for a dinghy quite a bit. Also, depends on how you boat, but we hardly ever actually use our dinghy.

My dinghy can be outfitted with a motor. However, when cruising on a smaller boat there's not a lot of moving around (not much room). I take any exercise where I can find it, so I prefer to row the dinghy. I find that rowing my dinghy is pretty easy.

 

[RCook]

We cruised many years in a 26-footer. Dinghy was a ~9.5 foot Avon Redcrest, hypalon, totally rollup (no slats), and only 40 lb. Kept in the cockpit, sitting on the engine box. 10-15 minutes to inflate with the Avon foot pump, rig and launch.

We had a 22lb 2hp 2-cycle Mariner (Yamaha) outboard, but often just rowed, especially if we were not going very far. Rowing is far better with a good pair of oars - the ones that come with small dinghies are generally poor to awful. We got a pair of 6.5 foot Sawyers. Having the choice of power or rowing is nice.

It's nice to have a dinghy so light that you can easily carry it above high water for shore excursions.

I forgot to mention: such a light dinghy can easily be kept inflated on the cabin roof as well, if the roof is not cluttered up with other stuff as ours was. No crane needed.

 

[HopCar]

Take a look at the Flip Tail dinghy. It is a skin on frame boat that folds flat in seconds and will do better than 10 mph with a 2.5 hp engine. I've got one about half built. Maybe I'll finish it one of these days.
The Fliptail folding dinghy

 

[Sailor of Fortune]

Take a look at the Flip Tail dinghy. It is a skin on frame boat that folds flat in seconds and will do better than 10 mph with a 2.5 hp engine. I've got one about half built. Maybe I'll finish it one of these days.
The Fliptail folding dinghy

I have never seen that design before,Parks. Pretty ingenious!

 

[FlyWright]

Take a look at the Flip Tail dinghy. It is a skin on frame boat that folds flat in seconds and will do better than 10 mph with a 2.5 hp engine. I've got one about half built. Maybe I'll finish it one of these days.
The Fliptail folding dinghy

Can you bring it to Ft. Pierce?

 

[HopCar]

Can you bring it to Ft. Pierce?

Al all I've got are the keel with stem and transom attached and the four side hoops. It's a long way from looking like a boat. The side hoops were a real challenge as I couldn't find suitable wood that was long enough. I had to scarf shorter pieces together. That took a lot of hours.

 

[FlyWright]

Al all I've got are the keel with stem and transom attached and the four side hoops. It's a long way from looking like a boat. The side hoops were a real challenge as I couldn't find suitable wood that was long enough. I had to scarf shorter pieces together. That took a lot of hours.

That's OK, Parks. You've still got a couple months to get it done. No pressure...

 

[HopCar]

That's OK, Parks. You've still got a couple months to get it done. No pressure...

Wise guy!

 

[tpbrady]

Having owned 2 C-Dorys and two trawlers, I have continued to use this Outcast Power Drifter Review ? Solid, Durable Fishing Boat as my take the dog to the beach and utility inflatable. I don’t use the rowing frame but put a board across the tubes and paddle with a kayak paddle. It will handle two people and a couple of dogs. On the C-Dorys it was carried on the roof (at less than 40lbs I pulled up on the bow to get it to the roof). It is stable enough to stand in. After 12 years it is still in service.

Tom