The Dinghy Thread

[JT48348]

"Small Dinghy on a Island Beach"

$200 sailing dinghy recued from a wood pile in NC. Painted, trimmed with fire hose, and drug to the Caribbean and back. Weighed about 80-90lbs.

I miss this little guy

[DesertAlbin736]

JT48348 says, "I love the faux lapstrake dinghy. If only they made a A25/A27 with the faux lapstrake. I think there's a boat called a M***? 27 that's a Swedish style downeaster or motorsailer."

You may be thinking of the Lyle Hess designed Nor'Sea 27. They are built in California by the same builder who makes Montgomery 15 and 17 sailboats. I used to own a Montgomery 15 myself from 2001 to 2005 and sailed it on both coasts, including Barnegat Bay in NJ, Cheseapeake Bay in MD, off Monterey, CA in the Pacific, and a run from Marina Del Rey in Los Angeles 30 miles out to Catalina Island.


Here's the builder's site for Nor'Sea 27's

http://www.norseayachts.com/ns27photo3.php

The Montgomery 15 and 17 builder's site is here

http://montgomeryboats.com/

One of the photos on the Montgomery home page shows two sailboats on Roosevelt Lake in Arizona. The one on the right, #102 with tanbark sails is me.

I'll tell you one thing about lapstrake boats. They're noisy at anchor, as waves lapping against those lapstrakes makes a gurgling sound all night.

[DesertAlbin736]

Revisiting and re-reading the Dinghy Thread and Denchen's comment:

Yep I live in Boston England, `the place where The Pilgrim Fathers` started from after we let them out of jail.

So many English place names were re-used in "the colonies". In addition to Boston in Massachusetts, there's Worchester, Gloucester, New Bedford, and Cambridge among others. And of course not to mention Plymouth. There's Stamford, Hartford and New London in Connecticut. There's Albany and Newburgh in New York, and of course New York City and state. There's a Bennington in Vermont (but spelled with two n's instead of one as in the UK Benington). There's a Northhampton township in Pennsylvania, a Lincoln in Nebraska (named after our 16th President, not the town in UK), a Birmingham in Alabama, a Manchester in New Hampshire. And of course New Hampshire the state. Newark and Bridgewater in New Jersey. New Jersey itself was named after the English controlled Isle of Jersey in the Channel. Charleston in South Carolina. Virginia was named in honor of Queen Elizabeth I. Pennsylvania was not named after a place in England, but after founder William Penn, as "Penn's woodland". And on and on.

And of course the Tom Branson character on Downton Abbey is leaving the Crawley estate to move to Boston, Massachusetts to go in business with his Irish cousin.

My own paternal line is descended from German and Swiss immigrants, the so-called "Pennsylvania Dutch" who landed in Philadelphia in the 1740s via Rotterdam and Southhampton. The Brits kept meticulous immigration records on those "foreigners" which survive to this day, and even include passenger manifests with the name of the ship and its master and date of arrival. On my maternal line I'm not sure when they first got here, but there are O'Brians, Carltons, Vorhees, and Haywards among those family names who were from Manhattan and Jersey City, so I'm thoroughly American with a mix of Irish, German, Swiss, Dutch and English roots and a little Mexican thrown in from my paternal grandmother.

My grandfather fought in the First World War with a unit of the NY National guard that was seconded under command of the British in the final offensive against the Hindenburg Line in September 1918. He was wounded in action and spent some time in a US Army hospital in England before being sent home and discharged.

[Mark Deeser]

Has anyone tried putting a 10 foot dinghy on the swim platform of an Albin 27? Found a nice Walker Bay at a good price. Worried about the overhang. Thanks.

[JT48348]

You may be thinking of the Lyle Hess designed Nor'Sea 27.

Definitely not a Nor'Sea 27, I'm well versed in those

The boat I was thinking of is something like a Snekka Froya 28, which may actually be Norwegian. Maybe the boat I referenced was named "Mariah" or some such; I saw it on craigslist in the pacific northwest a while ago. It was 25-29 feet, fiberglass lapstrake hull but with a lot of wood down below. Raised pilothouse & windows like an A25, motor launch/motorsailer look, and it may have had an aft cabin or separate aft quarterberth. It might have been a one off import, but at the time I saw it I remember googling it and saw a USA advert from the 70s-80s in black and white so it seemed they were in production. For the life of me I can't remember the name or find it online now.

the Snekka Froya 28 looks like this:

[Jay Knoll]

Saw this "deflatable" RIB jammed underneath the pier at our marina.

Finally tracked down the owner, a guy who was given the dinghy by some cruisers passing thru.

Once I got it out from underneath the pier I discovered that the bottom has separated from the tube.

The owner decided that he didn't want to restore it, so now its mine.

As if I need another boat related project.

We'll see what what the real damage is once I get it ashore and cleaned off.

For now, here's the "before" picture. That bright spot in the floor near the bow is light coming thru the space between the hull and the tube

[RobS]

nice ecosystem. you are going to have to submit an environmental impact statement before the commencement of any work!

[JT48348]

My personal experience with repairing separated floors has not been very good--at least for PVC (Zodiac) type floors.

I repaird two Zondiac brand inflatables over my life, both with small separations in the floor to tubes joint. The end result: free boats, but cost money for the glue, lasted about 1 year moderate use, then failed again, usually at worst time. This one of the reasons I switched to hypalon is becuase I feel the pvc-glue bond is just as strong. (I could be wrong about that, but its my impression). Then again both boats were left outside in high UV regions, so that might have been issue too.

Good luck on the repair. It will be a great bargain if you can get it to work

[Jay Knoll]

Thanks for the encouragement Joe, this youtube episode gave me some hope that I can make a repair.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9in1yI9if4

I spoke with the company and they said that the HH-66 product would work well on PVC dinghy tubes.

And here it is after the initial scrubbing. The tubes have been painted and are a bit sticky, don't know what I'll do about that..................

It is holding air pretty well, saw one area at the aft end of one tube that bubbled a bit while I was cleaning it. I'm thinking about using that sealant that you put inside the tubes to stop that leak and to avoid future pinhole leaks

Jay

[JT48348]

Jay: that looks pretty good!

Re: painted tubes. I made the mistake of painting my tubes on the second Zodiac--never got them tac free, and they cracked when they did. There might be something you can use to clean to the tube, or at least make the paint inert. On Hypalon thats acetone, not sure what it might be on PVC. Perhaps MEK or Toululene?

[Jay Knoll]

Yeah but............

Here's an exchange with a guy at Inland Marine which makes products for inflatable boat restoration

I wrote:
Dan

Well I pulled the boat out of the water and started cleaning it up. It is a West Marine RIB manufactured in France.

It clearly has been painted, there is grey paint on the top half of the tubes, but I can see the original white fabric, (looks like PVC) near the waterline. The boat was very dirty and grimy from sitting in the water for so long. And it looks like there was a lot of black exhaust soot on the tubes as well.

I scrubbed it with both Simple Green and Spray Nine using a white abrasive pad. The boat had been trapped underneath a dock so there was some wear and tear on the paint where it had rubbed against the wood. In spite of the scraped areas, no additional paint came off as I scrubbed the tubes. After a rinse and dry I noticed that the tubes are a bit “sticky”. Could this still be the paint not drying or do you think that there is still something on the tubes that needs to be removed? Should I try something stronger, perhaps mineral spirits and if that doesn’t work, then acetone? Should I just put some inflatable boat protectant on the tubes, coating the sticky areas with something slippery.

Or should I consider repainting and hoping that the new coat will adhere to the sticky areas but dry hard?

Thanks for the assistance

He replied:

If the paint is not coming off with all of the cleaning you have done, the “sticky” is coming from the PVC material de-polymerizing under the paint. If so, there is nothing you can top coat with that will last. Paint might initially dry but the chemical process going on with the underlying PVC will eventually leak through and make it sticky again. At this point you have nothing to loose with it so you might as well take a heat gun and scrape off everything you can, then sand off the rest. Let the boat sit out in the sun for a week or two and see what if the “sticky” is still going on. Not good news I know, but the boat may not be salvageable.



I'm not sure I want to take a heat gun to PVC fabric, or spend any time on trying to fix it, still kicking possibilities around while I head back to the 27FC to work on the refit.

Jay

[Jay Knoll]

So the dinghy has been leaning against the garage wall all summer while we've been cruising and vacationing, but it was never completely out of mind.

I've spent a lot of time thinking about how I will feel if I devote a bunch of sweat equity to this project, only to have the PVC continue to deteriorate (and we know if will).

So I decided to toss the whole thing into the dumpster..................... but then I had second thoughts. All I really want a dinghy for is to get ashore from anchor/mooring in fairly protected FL waters. I'm not going to be in the islands zooming off from the mother boat to go diving/swimming in some deserted spot. And I really don't want to buy an outboard -- rowing should do for what we will be facing (as an aside, I've been doing some rowing in my Heritage 18 with a sliding seat (http://www.littlerivermarine.com/heritage-18-classic/) I found a great deal on Craigslist and have been enjoying it immensely, I try to row 3 days a week, usually 6 miles, but the other day I got a bit carried away and did 15!).

So I'm looking that the POS in the garage and realizing that I've got a very sound hull bottom just aching to be taken care of. And I started thinking about Stitch and Glue construction.

I'm considering turning it into a little pram. I've got a bunch of cardboard which I can use to mock up the sides and the bow/stern. If I can get that to look reasonable then I'll move on to marine ply.

Anyone have any experience with a similar project? I've been looking at pram designs on the web and just purchased Sam Devlin's book on stich and glue construction. The Admiral isn't enthusiastic about this project but that has never (OK rarely) stopped me in the past when I get focused on a project. We'll see.

And then there is the problem of carrying the sucker. I'm thinking about ST. CROIX 350 DAVITS . Any experience installing them on a 27FC. I don't want to use weaver davits, I don't like the idea of the boat rolled up against the stern for some reason.

Jay

[kerrye]

I've used a lot of HH-66 glue over the years to glue d-rings into Royalex canoes. It's good stuff. Some people say it's best to use two coats, putting on the second coat after the first has dried and letting the second coat dry before heating it up with a heat gun to get it tacky and then glue it together. Shoe-Goo (Goop) is very good for sealing holes in PVC. I've got some canoe air bags still holding air after 20 years of a Shoe-goo fix.

[JT48348]

Yes! you should make it into an urban assault dinghy. Hard RIB floor and pram sides. It will be bullet proof.

It will have some weight. And I bet you will not be satisfied ever rowing it. But the good news is you will have an excuse to put a motor on it. Then you will enjoy exploring out from the mothership. You will abuse it like an old hideously reliable pickup and it will be the envy of every true pirate in every port. An added benefit is the "Admiral" will find it so ugly, you can explore alone in peace. While you have many adventures she can pick out swimwear to impress you and chill ur beers until you return grinning from ear to ear.

I have one alternative suggestion. "The Dinghy Flip". Get your free boat as clean as possible & looking it's best. Take many photos. Sell it to the first sucka you find for $300. Don't advertise what it's made of. Use the phrase "holds air and rigid floor, these models sell for $2000 new!" Take the $300 and put it towards a $600-900 new inflatable. Treat PVC as disposable and someone else's problem.

Ps-I sold the whistler lifeboat as it was too heavy for me to easily maneuver. Trying to find a faux lapstrake dinghy or something else unusual.

[Jay Knoll]

Well I certainly made the right decision on this POS. I had a few moments this afternoon while I was waiting for some glue to dry on another project so I thought I'd strip the tube off of the fiberglass hull.

The entire thing was stuck together! Just sitting in the garage, semi rolled up since April. A good indication that the PVC was breaking down. Then, when I slit the tubes open at the transom I discovered a bunch of "sealant" that had been put inside the tubes. Except in many places it had set and then peeled off the inside, imagine a bad sunburn. Finally, I was able to simply pull the tape connecting the tubes from the hull with my bare hands! I thought I was going to have to hit it with a heat gun or a sander to get the fiberglass clean, but in less than 5 minutes I had pulled the entire thing free.

I spent too much time cleaning this thing up, but who knew? Anyone who buys a PVC dinghy and lives in Florida is just throwing their money away. Hypalon is the only way to go.

Now I'm still pondering if I want to try building a hard dingy on the hull, but at least the junk is out of the garage and if I don't decided to proceed it will be easier to chop the hull apart with a sawzall!

Stay tuned, but it may be awhile.

Jay