The Dinghy Thread

[WillieC]

"It's not really out of the 90s and comfortably cool on the lake until after Halloween."

As Bob Dylan so eloquently puts it: "Honey, how come you don't move?!"

[2manyboats]

Desert Albin; I like your idea of using the fenders. Maybe a small rope mat cushion on the bow, very salty looking.

The hyplon kit was $850, but money well spent making the first mate happy !!

The way the WB is built, the tubes run almost to the transom where they are close to the water. As soon as you move aft they begin to increase buoyancy. Midship they they are 3-4 inches above the water. when they make contact. stability is very good. Supposedly you can stand on the rail, maybe someone with much better balance. The aft corners of the tubs also touch the water while towing which I think helps the dingy track well, and keeping the spray out.

Looking forward to your project

Wayne

[DesertAlbin736]

As Bob Dylan so eloquently puts it: "Honey, how come you don't move?!"

Ha ha! Well, because a) winters here are gloriously mild & pleasant (average annual rainfall 6 or 7 inches) from late Octobler/early November through the end of April and some of early May. We had only 2 or 3 nights in December where the overnight lows dipped a degree or two below freezing, and mostly it was 60s & 70s. And we live 15 minutes from a lake. And the climate is dry so we don't have to worry about winterizing the boat or worry about mildew. And b) that's why we have a trailerable boat with which we can escape the summer heat to cruise amazing places like Pacific NW, or if not boating take our RV travel trailer 2 hours' drive up into the mountains of Arizona's high country and go camping in cool pine forests.

[Sunsetrider]

Jealous!

[DesertAlbin736]

I don't know about being jealous, Sharbot Lake looks quite pretty judging by Google Earth street views. Reminds me a lot of where I used to live in Upstate NY near Saratoga & the Adirondacks back in the 70s before I moved West to Arizona. You are less than 300 miles from where I went to high school and 175 miles from Syracuse NY where you could put your boat in the Erie Canal. Sharbot lake looks to be similar in size as our Lake Pleasant, but you have dozens of other lakes nearby, not to mention being an hour away from Kingston & Lake Ontario. It's just that your boating season is opposite of ours, and opposite temperature extremes in the off season. Our saying here is 'you don't have to shovel heat'.

[JT48348]

Gentlemen: I refer your attention to General Order Number One. I know it's a tough concept especially if your from Arizona but this is the Dinghy Thread. Not be confused with some other yada yada.

[DCatSea]

Just installed a Harbormen Dinghy Sling to Mazboot, for our 9ft Zodiac HP. Once I got the instructions sorted out (about 30 minutes) the whole net thingy went together pretty well, and after a rapid learning curve about getting the inboard side up on the swim platform everything came together well. This may be our much-sought answer to what to do with the dinghy without towing it, putting it on the bow or installing expensive davits on the back end.

We won't be leaving the dinghy up on the sling while alongside at home base (smallish slip, not much leeway), but will rather hang as needed. Hanging it up single-handed took about 5 minutes once I'd done the math. Launching took all of 20 secs.

More to follow on steaming trials to come shortly.

[SJR]

Just bought a new Achilles LSI 310 (soft bottom) , Looking to attach the Hurley H20 Davit system onto our swim platform for easy retrieval/ deployment and during transit. Just wondering if anyone had any load capacity info on the 31 TE's swim Platform. W/O the motor the dinghy weighs in at 80lbs and if I keep the motor on a total of 173 lbs. For peace of mind I believe Id stow the motor during any type of long transit.


original plan was to hoist onto the cabin roof but decided against when I realized it would hang over the front of the roof by over a foot.

[DesertAlbin736]

I really liked the swim platform mounted snap davits which carried our hard shell dinghy like that. Right up until a wave ripped it off the back of the boat in rough waters of Georgia Strait in British Columbia. That's my biggest complaint about the A25 vs A27 is the rarrow 6 foot beam at the transom. You shouldn't have that problem with the full 9 foot transom of the 27. Those East coast style fixed docks with pilings always made me nervous about catching our dinghy on them. You couldn't get away with that style dock in the Pacific NW of Washington & British Columbia where 12 to 15 foot tides are the norm.

That's on topic, isn't it? {snark}

[SJR]

I attached a picture of what Im looking at; I like the really low profile of the two small stainless attachment points/ mounts for the bracket. The Brackets are 36" and longer then normal due to the short swim platform (only 22"). To your point i was concerned with getting caught up on a pile or something but the brackets are easily removed when we don't have the tender or if its in the water. this model is a little more expensive however the older model has big bulky 3"x 3"x 3" mounts that would be an eye sore as well as in the way, not to mention a trip hazard or bad stubbing of the toes.

thanks again for the response.

Scott

[Pitou]

The Hurley looks interesting. With the swim platform only 22 inches deep, what's the beam of your rib and where would the centerline be? For support I'd want the centerline "on" the swim platform. What does the manufacturer say you need for layout? And always remember, you want all dimensions within your beam at all times.

As far as what weight that the platform can support .. I have an 8' 6" 110 rib on Weaver Snap Davits and plan to up size to 10 ft at around 160 lbs.. been in some gnarley seas too. FWIW, I often have three adults sitting on it in the summer.

[SJR]

the keel will sit 10" off the platform, to their specs, their 36inch mounts would accommodate. the beam is 62" 21" of witch will be on the platform. leaving the pontoon 41" off. the keel rest 10" off. with the motor it would weigh in at 173lbs

[DesertAlbin736]

Whew! I just finished installing Garhauer lifting davits on my A25 yesterday to go with my Gig Harbor Nisqually 8 dinghy. Pictures coming soon. I think it will work well. Not all A25's have stern rails and lifelines, but mine does, so that makes it easier to install this type of davits since the uprights attach to the stern rail. Besides I mounted the bases on the swim platform so that the davit arms extend far enough out for the dink to clear the swim platform, and when the dinghy is lifted all the way up the sheer is a few inches above the stern rail. Since this dinghy is quite "tippy" I also "McGyvered" it into being a "RID" like the Walker Bay boats by adding three 8 X 20 line-through-the-middle Polyform fenders per side, adding 110 lbs of floatation to each side for less than half the cost of a Walker Bay kit, although the Gig Harbor dink itself costs three times as much as an 8 foot Walker Bay but is much classier in real fiberglass construction.

This picture of a sailboat with lift davits & hard shell dink is the general idea of how it looks.

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And another general idea on how these look. Except in my case I ran the bracing struts forward from the stern rail to the deck, thru bolted with backing plates and angled outward to add side-to-side stiffness.

davits installed.JPG

This should cure the issues of overhang down near the waterline that I had with the snap davits. Everything in boats is a compromise, and the compromise here is an extra added 3 feet of LOA, which with our anchor bowsprit, swim platform, & now davits makes our nominal 25 feet about 32 ft overall. But I don't keep our boat in a slip full time anyway.

[JT48348]

Time for some Dinghy fun!
The $75 Dyer Dhow is the next winter project as the weather gets colder and it threatens to rain or snow every other weekend. The goal is to rebuild the dinghy sans wood, needing no maintenance, and shed as much weight as possible in the search for the Lightest 9' Fiberglass Dinghy EVER. How light can I go?

A stock Dyer Dhow weighs in at more than 100lbs. This dinghy as is weighed it at approximately 66lbs. That's minus the seats, minus the rubrail, minus the cool bronze seat hardware, oar locks, etc. I spent some time eyeballing the transom. If I could get rid of most of the wood I could replace with 1/2" coosa board and save another 40%.

So I hacked out the flotation and the transom seat. I would have gotten rid of the teak half transom but it appeared glassed to the fiberglass skin. Oh well. I also chopped out the centerboard trunk which was basically worthless. Total weigh savings: another 12.5 lbs in centerboard trunk and transom seat.

I'm down to about 54 pounds bare hull. My shop mate calls it "a 55lb sheet of paper" as we try to move it about and it flexes and springs around. Hard to hold onto, large, but light enough it fights you every step of the way.

I plan to add two water tight storage compartments: one at the transom another at the bow with a bridge deck.

[DesertAlbin736]

Dyer Dhows are good dinks. Definitely a good winter project. Looking forward to seeing how it turns out.

Anyway, here are promised pictures of the above referenced davit project, finished up yesterday, brand new Gig Harbor Nisqually 8 on Garhauer davits. The only thing I lose here is the ability to hang my secondary Danforth style anchor on the stern rail, as the added bracing struts are in the way. Will have to install chocks on the fore deck to store the anchor up there near the bow. The davits are well braced with a cross T bar plus angle struts between the top horizontal arms, plus being attached to the stern rail which goes straight between the two uprights, plus bracing struts added to the stern rail from right next to where the davits attach to the rail & angled forward and outward, making a trapezoidal structure between the deck, stern rail, and existing rail upright stanchion. The only thing with the Garhauers is they cannot be easily rotated like some of the Forespar davits, but I believe the extra rigidity is worth it.

The fat fenders on the sides of the dink are the MacGyver compromise solution to my wife's preference to have an inflatable vs hard shell. They turned out looking pretty good. I had a bunch of old but serviceable 3/8" braided halyard line leftover from sailboat days, which I ran through the 'hole-in-the-middle' fenders. I used 1/4-20 size eye nuts through bolted from the inside with 3/4 inch long cap screws, backed with s/s fender washers & lock washers. At the aft end I secured the line by tying a figure 8 stopper knot at the eye nut, and in between fenders used carabiner clips to hook the line onto the eye nuts. At the forward end I tied swivel snap hooks to the end of the line & hooked to the eye nut. An added bonus here is that fenders are always in place. Theoretically if the engine broke down we could tie the dinghy alongside the the stern quarter & use the outboard as emergency propulsion to tow the boat. We've done that before helping other boats, and it works quite well rather than a tow line from the bow. Weight wise, the davits add about +/- 20 lbs. The dink is 73 lbs plus another 20 or so for the fenders. With 2.5 HP Tohatsu motor weighing 28 lbs (which won't be attached to the dinghy when it's lifted by the davits) that adds up to about 130 lbs total add to the stern, about 40 lbs more than the previous dinghy setup, minus the 18 lbs of the anchor that used to be hung from the stern rail.

I wasn't sure if I'd be able to keep the motor mount that I had before, but I think there is still room to put it back on. There really isn't much room to add a motor mount to the stern rail, since we have to do a limbo under the stern rail to climb up from the swim platform.

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You can see in this picture where the old dinghy bumped up against the rudder & scuffed the bottom paint when it broke loose & capsized after it got ripped loose from the snap davits by that big wave.

20161029_135533 (1280x720).jpg

The next conundrum to solve is adding a folding boarding ladder similar to the one in this picture, which I could never really do with the snap davits. The narrowness of the swim platform combined with the curvature of the transom made it difficult to find a viable solution. Now with lifting davits I might be able to have something like this:

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Once again, many thanks to my friend Bruce for letting me use his facilities to do all this work in a nice shaded open air structure. The only downside was that's it's way downtown in Phoenix, 20 miles each way from my house, so going down there every day last week to do all this work was 250 miles of total driving, about 80 minutes of commute time each day. And inevitably I'd forget to bring some tool or other I'd need. But it was well worth it.