Shopping for a dinghy

All,
Dinghy shopping and need some advice.

I currently have a 8ft Walker Bay RIB, and it's a great boat, but just too small and unstable.

Looking for at least 10ft, perhaps 12, but weight is an issue and want to keep the boat below 150 to 200 lbs. So, I'm not looking at fiberglass. Aluminum looks interesting and a lot of RIBs are fairly light (at least the 10 ft ones).

Have a 6 hp motor to propel it.

Thoughts on one that's fairly stable and fairly quick with 7 hp, and reasonably dry?

We have a 10'4" Achilles RIB with a double floor and bow locker. It is very dry and stable and it weighs 160lb.
Achilles also has the same length with a single floor and it's lighter.
When we first bought it I had an 8hp and it planed with both of us, but just barely.

Look at the AB Aluminum Hulls

Dinghy Options

We just bought our AB 9' aluminum RIB and love it. But while we were looking, we also seriously considered a Highfield aluminum Ultralite RIB. Less expensive than AB & seem well-made.

They make a 10' version and online it says it weighs 108 lbs (?), but be careful because they make them out of PVC as well as hypalon . Hypalon is the only way to go in our opinion. Good luck!

jleonard said:

We have a 10'4" Achilles RIB with a double floor and bow locker. It is very dry and stable and it weighs 160lb...

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We have a 9.8 hp 2 stroke on ours that will plane with two adults, the dog and some gear. The bow locker is nice for the 2 life preservers, small anchor and some tools. After 10 years she’s still going strong but starting to show her age.

Seevee said:

All,
Dinghy shopping and need some advice.

I currently have a 8ft Walker Bay RIB, and it's a great boat, but just too small and unstable.

Looking for at least 10ft, perhaps 12, but weight is an issue and want to keep the boat below 150 to 200 lbs. So, I'm not looking at fiberglass. Aluminum looks interesting and a lot of RIBs are fairly light (at least the 10 ft ones).

Have a 6 hp motor to propel it.

Thoughts on one that's fairly stable and fairly quick with 7 hp, and reasonably dry?

Click to expand...

Having had 2 Zodiac's over the years, I would " never " touch another one ... heavy like hell, wet ride and the chronic valve leak. We own a 10.5 Highfield Al. double floor deep V, large tubes ( dry ride ) about 100 lb. I love this boat.

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Check out Highfield boats. Some have aluminum hulls and are pretty light for the length. We have one and love it.

Paul

We also have a Walker Bay. Keeping the weight down will be your biggest challenge. We are at a hefty 850lbs.

West Marine hypalon so far seem to be pretty good quality dingies.

They usually have a blowout sale around the 4th of July. Got mine with a 30 percent discount or so.

Even less expensive than Defender brand.

The 3.10 single floor is great with an 8hp 4 stroke and 1 person, not bad with 2...but struggles to plane with 3 or more.

Less hp and you may only plane with 1 person.

Check out this site, they sell dinghy's also.
www.sailors-exchange.com
I hope someone finds this site helpful.

I have a 12 foot Aluminum Valco U12 which is pretty stable, and weighs only 125 pounds, less the outboard. Powered by a 5HP Tohatsu 2 stroke and moves pretty well and seats 5 comfortably.

We're looking at a AB 10AL with a Tohastu 20E w/ Tiller. We have to finalize the davit system first though.

Jim

Larry M said:

We have a 9.8 hp 2 stroke on ours that will plane with two adults, the dog and some gear. The bow locker is nice for the 2 life preservers, small anchor and some tools. After 10 years she’s still going strong but starting to show her age.

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Yeah, Larry, 10 years old....people are beginning to talk.....better get rid of it. I'd take it off your hands since you're probably going to order a fresh one now. My old Caribe 9 suffered a double blow-out in Irma.

healhustler said:

Yeah, Larry, 10 years old....people are beginning to talk.....better get rid of it. I'd take it off your hands since you're probably going to order a fresh one now. My old Caribe 9 suffered a double blow-out in Irma.

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We’ll be up your way next week. Maybe we can make a deal. :lol:

We have a Caribe Light 11 with a 20hp Zuki which we keep on the swim platform via modified trick davits. I know a ton of people have posted to your thread with lot's of good options, but since we both have the same big boat, I figured my experience might be relevant.

The Caribe has been good, ours is a 2007, it holds air great (I treated it with a pour in sealer 2 months ago and haven't pumped it up since), but it is starting to look pretty rough.

I'm a few years off, but I will likely go with either a 12' Aluminum AB or a 12' aluminum Highfield. I like that AB leaves the aluminum bare. I'm concerned about the long term durability of the powder coating on the Highfields. We are hard on a dinghy, dragging it onto beaches frequently.

12' will stick out a little wider than the transom so I'll have to be careful docking.

I don't notice much performance difference in the big boat with the dinghy on or off.

Hope that helps.