I've had dinghys on the brain and have been trying to understand the reason so many people like RIBs.
I started with the
history. During the age of sail, tenders of various sizes were used, all chiefly propelled by oars. "Two Years Before the Mast" mentions a quarter-boat, a long-boat, a gig, a launch, a jolly-boat, and a pinnace. There is little detail about the sizes or construction of these, but at one point there's mention that the crew of one of the
boats was made up of a coxswain, a bowman, and four
men. In adSpdition the
boat would carry cargo or passengers. A later
passage mentions six
men in the jolly-boat. Another mentions a gig being crewed by a
captain and four men. Another mentions the quarter-boat having a crew of four and carrying a passenger.
Other sources give the sizes of the Whitehall Rowboat as being 14 to 22 feet in length at the pinnacle of its development, prior to the adoption of the internal combustion
engine; the related Whitehall Gig is slightly longer, up to 25 feet.
Joshua Slocum's
Spray had a
tender on
deck positioned athwartships between the fore and aft cabins. As the
Spray was 14 feet abeam and the
tender all but reaching rail to rail it must have been about 12 feet long.
More modern yachts with a
single raised
cabin extending from the foredeck to the
cockpit, and a
cabin roof cluttered with
rigging, dorades, and hatches, don't have space for a 12 foot tender. I gather from my reading that in the 1960s and 1970s, before the heyday of hypalon and PVC, that 8 and 10' hard dinghys were the norm, for cruising yachts.
Which isn't big enough. And that's the central problem of
dinghy selection, that a large enough
dinghy is just out of the question. Growing up, my
family had
aluminum fishing boats -- a 12' one with a 3hp
outboard, a 14' one with a 5.5hp
outboard, and a 16' one with an 18hp outboard. There were clear differences in seakeeping ability from one craft to the next were obvious enough to me as a child. We came home in whitecaps more than once in the 16', after being caught out in increasing winds, and while we got wet and were bounced around, it wasn't nearly the fright it would have been in either of the smaller boats.
We rowed all of them, at times, so as not to scare the
fish. They had oarlocks, and we always had a good pair of oars on board as a hedge against the
motor failing. The 12' and 14' were easy enough to row, despite being planing hulls intended for motorized use; the 16' was more difficult.
I think the central problem of hard dinghys is that they are all too small. I would think that, questions of
storage aside, the perfect hard dinghy would be around 14' for rowing or 16' for motoring.
RIBs, I surmise, and other inflatables, were adopted by the cruising community as a means of solving the size problem, because they can carry more weight and tolerate higher seas for their length than hard dinks -- and they can be deflated for
storage. So we started out, if I understand the
history correctly, with 8' donut dinghys in the 1970s and have more or less moved to a 10'
RIB as being tender most people choose if they have room for it, with a few people having slightly larger RIBs.
I haven't been in a
RIB, but I would guess that the practical capacity and seakeeping ability of a 10' RIB is more or less the same as a 14'
boat made entirely of
aluminum or
fiberglass or
wood. The 14' boat made of, say,
fiberglass, will be more durable, and require half the horsepower, and can be rowed or perhaps sailed. It will weigh about the same as the RIB.
RIBs are well-suited to volume production. They can be manufactured in low-wage countries and easily packed onto a pallet and shipped, and go through a distribution chain very much like that of a lawn mower or table saw. They are used for all kinds of reasons other than as tenders for cruising ships, and because of their short life there is a robust replacement market. That's convenient, because it means there is a ready supply of them, more or less worldwide. Need a new dink? One
phone call to the dealer is all it takes.
I'm seeing nesting dinghys as a better answer. They solve the size problem in a different way -- not by packing more seakeeping ability into every foot, but by packing twice as many feet of boat onto the foredeck or cabin top. They are a niche product that has not attracted the interest of higher volume makers and distributors. A careful review of the designs of the most successful nesting dinghys shows convergence -- the Spindrift, Chameleon, and PT-11 are remarkably similar in their dimensions and lines. The differences are in ease of construction, in how reserve flotation is provided, in the rig, in the sophistication of the
rudder and
centerboard or lee boards, in how the halves are connected, and in fine details.
Like a one-piece hard dink, a nesting tender has clear advantages over a RIB. These become especially clear if comparisons are made based on storage space required: an 11' nesting dinghy fits in roughly the same space as a deflated 8' rib. The nesting dinghy has greater durability, half the horsepower requirement, and a
hull shaped to allow effective rowing or sailing.
The problem, as I see it, is that there's no market. You can get plans or a kit, or have a
builder construct one for you, bespoke, at a bespoke
price and on a bespoke schedule.
Linear Mode
Recent Discussions