The family car
Many people who are not “out there” might miss the important role that a cruiser’s dinghy or tender plays in their life. Without a functioning dinghy, we would often be stuck on the boat, unable to make it to shore for pleasure trips or provisioning excursions. When we first bought our boat, the sellers included with it a brand new Walker Bay soft-bottomed PVC dinghy powered by a brand new Tohatsu 4-stroke outboard engine. Although the now-functioning Tohatsu is, for the time being, serving us well (if you don’t know what I mean by now-funtioning, just use the blogs search function to read about our past engine woes), we have come to realize that the dinghy, although fine for day use in the US or Canada, wouldn’t really cut it as a tender in the tropics.
Dinghys come in two basic categories: inflatable or hard. A hybrid of this is called a RIB which stands for Rigid-hulled Inflatable Boat. As the name implies, they have a hard bottom (fiberglass or aluminum) with inflatable tubes to keep them buoyant. The hard bottom allows it to move more efficiently through the water and also offers protection when dragging the boat onto not-always-soft-sand beaches.
The two most common materials for these boats are PVC and Hypalon, the latter being much more resistant to UV light (sunshine) and thus, much longer lasting in the tropics.
With this information now in our databanks, we decided that a small Hypalon RIB is what we wanted. For the last month or so, we have been searching Craigs List for items like this for sale in the areas we were in. One challenge for us was to find a small boat because we still need for it to fit on our davits. Smaller boats like this appear a bit harder to come by. While in Fernandina Beach though, we came across just such a boat. A bit of dickering back and forth with the seller and Rebecca and I are now the owners of a brand new “family car.” We towed the dinghy back to our boat yesterday morning, cleaned it up and swapped the Tohatsu over to it. The Walker Bay PVC dinghy we have was then cleaned up, deflated and will now be sold to some other boater. We are pretty happy with the deal that we made and are confident that this new dinghy will serve us better than the original one that we started our cruise with.
Cleaning up the new dinghy.
For sale: 1 Walker Bay slat-floor PVC dinghy.
All folded up for the new owners, whoever that will be.
Enjoying the beach at Cumberland Island.
Congratulations! The new dinghy looks a lot like ours — only newer. Ours is slowly decomposing into white powder. Now we can have dinghy envy!
Is yours Hypalon or PVC Tammy?
As a weekend boater, I know how a full time cruiser depends on the “dink”….The kids and I put more hours on our tender, than the mother ship……I have an inflatable, but you will be so happy with the hard bottom………A much better boat……..Now will you need a new 15 hp engine so you can pull Rebecca on water skiiis
I think a 9.9HP 2-stroke will suffice.
🙂
Water skiing with a 15? I suppose you could pull Rebecca with that. 30 is just barely enough to pull me- not impossible, just really slow to get started. I’ve tried with 9.9 and just can’t get up.
Most 9.9s are virtually identical to their 15 hp siblings, except for the carb and sometimes ignition. There is a weight jump from 8 to 9.9, but usually no weight jump from 9.9 to 15. For a dinghy, where weight is the main concern, I’d tend to go with the top-rated engine from a group- the 8 or the 15. Lower in the group would be my preferred choice when it’ll run long and hard, such as a larger vessel’s main engine.
We shouldn’t be talking about this within earshot of Mike and Rebecca’s engines, though. Outboards are prone to fits of jealous rage if they suspect you have your eye on a newer, shinier model.
Tohatsu-san looks happy on his new transom 🙂
Apart from the fold-into-a-little-bag aspect, I’m not a big fan of true inflatables. A rigid hull lasts longer, performs better, and if you don’t fold the dinghy up for each passage it doesn’t get in the way any more than a soft one would. It also makes a decent, quick-to-launch lifeboat in the event of a catastrophic incident on board (fire being the only one I can think of that would truly cripple a PDQ, since they stay afloat even when holed and flipped).
That said, I’ve heard of people who otherwise wouldn’t be able to own a boat, but can keep a soft-bottom in a bag in their city apartment. Add a small outboard and air pump, and you have inner-city boating with nothing more than a taxi and a shoreline.
Tohatsu-Sama does look happy, doesn’t he?
Nice!
I always hated trying to find a good way to secure the front half of an inflatable to davits; when it loses air, there’s trouble.
Sailing last weekend in ~ 25 knots, the plastic spreader that holds the front of my tender (sport boat with a 4-piece floor and inflatable keel–takes 4x the space of the Walker Bay to roll-up) broke, pulling the forward floor out and dropping the front of the tender in the water, which pulled the pad-eye holding the back out of the transom (I was going over 10 knots in 3- to 4-foot waves). I don’t know why it didn’t flip, and getting it back under control while singlehanding was painful. fortunatly, I keep the towing bridle pre-rigged.
Yeah, the RIB looks really nice. Good call. I borrowed one once, and it felt so much more solid, a much better family car.
That sounds like a crappy experience. Glad you got it under control with minimal damage.
Nice dingy! What is the brand and length? Mexico does not add ethanol to gasoline or use low sulfer diesel. You may want to see what is offered in the Carribean since you are heading that way.
The dinghy is 8.5′ and is Boat US brand (no longer available). I don’t know if gas in the Caribbean currently has ethanol but I would suspect that if it doesn’t, in the future it will.
Well, it sure didn’t take you long to get a new waterborne hummer! Looks better than the land ones!
I’ve really been enjoying your blog and just wanted to say thanks for all the detail and frequent posts. It’s nice to read the blog of someone just starting out. We hope to be doing that soon.
Deb
S/V Nomad
http://www.theretirementproject.blogspot.com
You’re very welcome Deb. Thanks for posting the link to your blog too.
Good move, I know you will be happy with your choice! I remember there were so many friends who either had dinghies that bit the dust or that just could not cut it in a rough harbor on a rough day and we set up a “taxi” service via the cruising friends who had big fancy dinks. We used to call “Taxi #1, Taxi #1 we need a pick up off Volleyball Beach.”
A good dinghy is EVERYTHING!
Our dinghy is still very small so we’d make a pretty cosy taxi. 🙂