Davits To Be or Not to be

[Jolly Roger]

Like a lot of things about boats, davits are a matter of personal choice, relevant to dinghy size, boat size and particularly your usage. My 45 foot schooner was fitted with strong tubular aluminum davits when I bought her. The problem for us was hoisting the 10 foot RIB eight feet on tackles for the night. It was a two person job and hurt our hands. I solved that with an electric hoist modified from a cheap winch used on towing vehicles. Another problem was fitting the cover when in the water, prior to hoisting the dinghy. Details of both these can be read from my website, but it still comes down to individual choice and your boat and dinghy type. For us the problems are solved.

Lifting the dinghy with an electric hoist

[Jolly Roger]

For some reason this second link for the dinghy cover did not go through.
Click here. DINGHY COVER

[Ozzlawrence]

Go for the davits. My boat is a Fraser 41 and I towed a polycraft some 1800 kilometres. Then more recently tried using an inflatable stored on the foredeck. Have just finished installing davits and love the new free space on the foredeck as well as not having to tow a tender which also slows the boat. The cost you mentioned seems extreme. We made our davits using schedule 40 316 marine grade stainless steel 38mm diameter tube with 5mm thick 316 stainless plate as reinforcing gussets in the bends and 10mm 316 stainless rod over the top of the gussets on the outside of the bends. The 10mm rod is overkill and 6mm (or smaller) would have done the job perfectly. Doing the work and making the davits ourselves was a fair bit of work as most of the bending, cutting and welding was done at a friends workshop away from the boat so we made some small errors and had to modify a couple of things. Unfortunately, one of the neighbouring boats where we are tied up complained about us welding on the boat hence our moving to the workshop. After pointing out that my boat being fibreglass (predominantly plastic) and thus an insulator could not cause any electrolysis issues for the neighbouring aluminium boat, we received support to work on our boat from the neighbours, but by then we had already completed most of the work elsewhere. My tender is a soft bottom inflatable so we made support frames to fit under the inflatable pontoons and above so as to sandwich the tender and hold it securely. The total cost is less than $1000 and very strong.
Now I can see forward from the helm without struggling to see over the tender on the foredeck as well.
Go davits

[dcstrng]

Originally Posted by Cheechako

Davits to me are one of the top few most useful things cruising. On larger boats anyway. They eliminate tons of work and boat deck damage...

Ditto -- had them on the Irwin (42) when I lived aboard and pretty much used them constantly, and they worked great... can't imagine on a smaller boat tho', and really dislike towing a dinghy -- so far have done without a dinghy cuz am not fond of cabin-top storage -- if possible, davits are the way to go...

[sogin]

We installed Kato Davits on 40 and 42 foot vessels. They sell stabilization straps with a ratchet mechanism that work quite well. Recently we switched to a shorter RIB (9 feet) and that has resulted in a much more stable situation when the RIB plus its 10 hp Honda is hoisted onto the davits. We have electric winches and although not essential, we have sometimes used the winches to hoist the RIB onto the davit.

[tonitutusaus]

Curious how subjective things can be.

We had a 31 footer and later a 34 footer. I built davits for both of them. Used them once..... and never again.

In my opinion, only wortwhile if the dingy is immense.

tonitutusaus

[TheOffice]

Chartered a boat without davits or motor hoist. Using the dinghy was a hugh PIA!

[Sailmon]

We too installed Garhauer davits. Excellent design & quality. Definitely improved our cruising experience. Comes standard with 6:1 tackle so easy to lift dinghy with engine. Took us around 12 hours to complete install. Cost under $1400.