Almost Lost Our Dinghy

[Gaia]

Originally Posted by Mike OReilly

I lost my dinghy last season near the end of a 3-day gale. Had three-strand painter to a mid-ship cleat. Cleat was fine. Chafe was the culprit here. Luckily one of the local fishermen saw our dinghy beached nearby and he went over to retrieve it for us.

He initially tried to row it back to us because he couldn’t get the engine started. But the wind was too much, even for this burly Newfoundland fisherman. So he went and got his own dory and eventually got it back to us.

http://helplink.com/CLAFC/wp-content...8/IMGA0592.mp4

Gotta love those Newfie fishermen eh Mike? And those from Nova Scotia as well!

Jim

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by AZUS

I tend to use a round turn and two half hitches for safety purposes when tying up our dinghy anywhere - but good knots don't cure stupid!

One time in the Bahamas, I was carrying a length of line that was identical to our painter in the dinghy. I tied up with a beautiful round turn and couple/few half hitches, and hopped aboard. Fortunately, our daughter spotted the dinghy in the distance a couple hours later. (another bit of stupid - I jumped in immediately and swam the dinghy down; two minutes to grab fins would have been very helpful!)

When I tracked down the dinghy to see what had happened, and - you guessed it - I had tied up the spare line to the boat, thinking it was the painter. Note to self - painters work best when both ends are made secure!

+1 on the round turn, and two half hitches!


When the rope is too small in relation to the size of the cleat, the normal cleat hitch does not hold reliably. I would never tie the dinghy painter like that.


It's also not a bad idea to simply lift the dinghy overnight, rather than leaving it in the water where different things can happen to it, including simply slime accumulating on the bottom.

[waterman46]

Keep it simple. You can tie a bowline around a stanchion as fast as you can clip a locking carabiner. Bowlines in normal braided or 3 strand, tightened properly, do not slip.
Don't use a cleat for primary attachment point, but after tieing the bowline, then you get on board, then you can cleat the bitter end if it makes you feel better. I prefer to use no hardware like carabiners, etc as they just get in the way, can catch or bang on things, etc. and if you want to readjust the length you are back to untying and retying knots anyway.

Learn to tie a bowline on a bight so you can tie a long painter to any length just as fast.

The only excuse to justify needing a carabiner is if you have your kids using your dinghy not in your immediate supervision, such as brief trips to visit friends on other boats.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by waterman46

Keep it simple. You can tie a bowline around a stanchion as fast as you can clip a locking carabiner. Bowlines in normal braided or 3 strand, tightened properly, do not slip.
Don't use a cleat for primary attachment point, but after tieing the bowline, then you get on board, then you can cleat the bitter end if it makes you feel better. I prefer to use no hardware like carabiners, etc as they just get in the way, can catch or bang on things, etc. and if you want to readjust the length you are back to untying and retying knots anyway.

Learn to tie a bowline on a bight so you can tie a long painter to any length just as fast.

The only excuse to justify needing a carabiner is if you have your kids using your dinghy not in your immediate supervision, such as brief trips to visit friends on other boats.

Bowlines have a tendency to work loose when not under load, especially in small cordage, which is exactly what you don't want in this application. So if you're going to use a bowline for this, I would suggest a variation like a water bowline with an extra turn.



Otherwise, the round turn and two half hitches does not have this issue.

[skipgundlach]

Originally Posted by Mike OReilly

I lost my dinghy last season near the end of a 3-day gale. Had three-strand painter to a mid-ship cleat. Cleat was fine. Chafe was the culprit here. Luckily one of the local fishermen saw our dinghy beached nearby and he went over to retrieve it for us.

He initially tried to row it back to us because he couldn’t get the engine started. But the wind was too much, even for this burly Newfoundland fisherman. So he went and got his own dory and eventually got it back to us.

http://helplink.com/CLAFC/wp-content...8/IMGA0592.mp4

Looks like a PortaBote...

[nwdiver]

I use an eye in the painter, through the cleat then over, the more it pulls it tightens......works great on dock cleats also and is long enough to tie off when needed......

[Mike OReilly]

Originally Posted by skipgundlach

Looks like a PortaBote...

Yeah, I thought it was funny that my Newfoundland fisher friend was using one .

But yes, our poor old portabote got pretty banged up. I was worried at first b.c it was swamped on the rocky beach, but no leaks, no problems. Damn those things are tough.

[roverhi]

Had our dinghy go walkabout on our cruise. !/4" 3 strand painter wrapped around the boats largish cleats was the culprit. Small diameter line around large cleats is a recipe for a lost dinghy. After the dinghies second solo trip tied a bowline in the end of the painter, looped that over the cleat and no more lost dinghy. If you are worried about bowline coming loose, put a stopper knot on the bitter end or take a couple stitches to lock in the line.

[JPA Cate]

The comments about the size of the line used for the painter are interesting. We have never used less than 12mm. We also do use the floating polyethylene line for one of the painters, the short one with a heavy spring carabiner termination. For the other, longer one (sometimes the tree's a longer way away) it's about 50 ft. of polyester line. Never had a chafe problem the way our cleats are set up. And the painters are attached to a s/s bow shackle at the dinghy end, so no chafe there, either.

As someone else mentioned above, we, too, have retroreflective tape on the o/b cover, strategically placed. Sapient Sue sewed some on the dinghy chaps, as well, helps people see where the dinghy is when they shine a light coming into the anchorage at night. Their boat also has a line of reflective tape that runs the length of the bottom of the toerail, so you really get a lot of information from aiming the light there for a moment.

Ann

[fentona]

I have lurked for months, and this is my first reply. Thank you for lost dinghy thread and advice. We have chartered 10+ weeks over years with floating yellow poly secured to cleats and not yet had a problem. Now I know to be more careful. AF in Toronto.

[JPA Cate]

Good on ya, fentona!

It is Murphyism at its best: what can go wrong, will....

and the corollary: at the most inconvenient time!

Cheers,

Ann

[Bean Counter]

An Eye Splice or even a whipped and stitched loop with UV thread covered in heat shrink, threaded through the center of the cleat and around will never come "undone", it might chafe through, so we use cored polypropylene that floats, when the chafe starts to work through the cover to the core - time to put in a new eye. At night if the dink is in the water we attached a plastic coated stainless steel padlocked cable as well..

[mowerandy]

as Thinwater mentioned, if using carabiners, you might want to consider locking ones.
I am not convinced I would bother with it myself since it is an uncommon occurrence, but I do remember clearly when non-locking crabs went out of favor overnight in the hang-gliding community. No-one believed they could be opened without a hand on metal until some guy holding a webbing loop attached to the demo crab by another webbing loop, simply flicked both loops and presto - they were apart. Good chance you are going to die if you become separated from your hang glider, and the entire club went to locking gate crabs overnight as a result of that frightening demo of what can happen in a weightless instant when the loop or rope falls backwards across the gate and then becomes loaded again.

[Tortuga's Lie]

For those reading and not sure if you are securing your lines to your cleats correctly, and it addresses small lines paired with large cleats:
How to Tie a Cleat Hitch, Three Ways | APS Advisor

Annapolis Performance Sailing has a whole library of videos for the newbies as well as veterans. Worth a look.

[sv Grateful]

We use poly cored braded line spliced to the towing eye of the dinghy with a cork float tied to the other end.

I can't imagine that float slipping through a properly tied cleat hitch. Dink's on the davits EVERY night.

Never a problem in three years full time cruising.