Dinghy ... Unique Alternatives

[Simi 60]

Originally Posted by Celestialsailor

Is this unique enough?

Used in Vietnam.
Have seen them used in light surf, have seen them several hundreds of meters offshore.
Bottom on older ones get coated in bitumen

[RELENTLESS 1]

I am doing research on these for a simple reason, my wife and i were with friends in So. Pacific and when in some of the remote lagoons (e.g. Mopelia, or even Bora Bora) on a HR 46, I wanted to go out and SAIL a dingy for fun!!
There we were in these very cool lagoons and not way to sail. That plus the benefit of being able to row for a good workout seems double benefit. We will be purchasing a 40-45 foot cat, so passage storage will be on the foredeck or coach roof in some manner.
The Trinka looked cool and tis one looked really interesting
PT Eleven Nesting Dinghy home page

anyone out there have any experience with either of these or any others.
p.s. the Eastport pram looked to much like a Sabot - not that much fun.

[TrentePieds]

Quote: "I'm sure it was a joke for a tender. I would bet it is used someplace for something. I wonder what? "

Not a joke. It's called a "corrachle" and is used in the west of Oireland for inshore fishing. That's why Irishmen are so dizzy.

What's the sense of looking for a dink that stows "easily" on a 30-footer? If you expect the impossible you WILL be disappointed. If you attempt the impossible, you WILL fail :-)

TrentePieds

[topmast]

Have you considered nesting coracles? two wouldn't take up more room than one and crew could go ashore while you go fishing. Could be stored over the cockpit as a sun shade. Other advantages may be not so obvious.

[Adelie]

Originally Posted by Celestialsailor

...and people do this everyday because it's better...or at best because everyone else is doing it.

+1


A house is but a boat so poorly built and so firmly run aground you would never try to refloat it.

[denverd0n]

Originally Posted by MarkJ

When thinking about your own needs think about everyone else too

Don't you wish everyone would follow this advice, all the time, in everything they do?

[SteveSadler]

I have seen a couple of Smartkats here in the Med. Inflatable 14' cat with rudders, daggerboard, performance rig, sails fast for E6000. The owners had an electric motor mounted as well. Inflatable windsurfers are also an option, some are big enough for 2 adults. Personally I use my 9m kite to sail around in my 3.5m rib, quite fun!

[PhiSig1071]

Originally Posted by SteveSadler

I have seen a couple of Smartkats here in the Med. Inflatable 14' cat with rudders, daggerboard, performance rig, sails fast for E6000. The owners had an electric motor mounted as well. Inflatable windsurfers are also an option, some are big enough for 2 adults. Personally I use my 9m kite to sail around in my 3.5m rib, quite fun!

How's the carrying capacity of the smartkat? It's certainly a unique option that looks like it would be great fun sailing around an anchorage, but would it be too much of a trade-off in utility?

[Freedom45]

We have a Portabote with a 2hp ob that we have used for 2 years cruising the Pacific.
Bought it on craigslist for $200...has worked great, abused he heck out of it. It is okay for going to a near shore in protected anchorage, easy to drag up on beach but not for buzzing around exploring or to snorkel areas, hard to climb in/out.
Folds up against rail, takes no room on boat, will give it away to anyone who wants it, they just have to be in Fiji. He have a new deflatable(temporay) that works okay. New dinghy on order, an OCtender, will pick up in NZ.

Cheers

[SteveSadler]

Hi PHISIG
I witnessed the sailing ability of the cat and was very impressed.
Personally, I have a 3.5 m rib and would nor trade for this cat. A tender is just a tender. A toy sailboat is just that. If you have the budget and storage for them both, then buy both and enjoy sailing that much more. But most of us are constrained by money and space so a tender is more important.
As I mentioned, inflatable windsurfers are a good option, how many toys can you fit?

[PhiSig1071]

Originally Posted by SteveSadler

Hi PHISIG
I witnessed the sailing ability of the cat and was very impressed.
Personally, I have a 3.5 m rib and would nor trade for this cat. A tender is just a tender. A toy sailboat is just that. If you have the budget and storage for them both, then buy both and enjoy sailing that much more. But most of us are constrained by money and space so a tender is more important.
As I mentioned, inflatable windsurfers are a good option, how many toys can you fit?

I have unlimited space, or zero space, depending on how you look at it. I don't have a boat right now, I'm stuck in the desert. I'm just keeping abreast of ideas and theories in the community.

Space on a boat is a premium, for sure. So something that can pull double duty is useful. I love small boat sailing, and the thought of sailing around a protected anchorage sounds like a great way to spend the day, but few boats have the space to haul a standard dink and a small sailboat. So something that can do both would be useful (but only if it can do both reasonably well!)

I'm also an avid scuba diver, so I want to easily be able to swim, snorkel, or dive off the dink, which pretty much limits me to an inflatable or RIB. F-RIB has a folding, inflatable RIB and an optional sail kit, but the model they offer the sail kit for is very long and narrow, which I would think would be too much of a compromise in stability and comfort (its a flat bottom hull) for it to be useful in its primary purpose as a dinghy.

The one that interests me the most is the "DinghyGo". Its a folding, 3.5M/9ft inflatable that can be outfitted with a sail kit (including a dagger board) or an 8hp outboard. Pull the sail kit off and it looks and operates like any other standard dinghy, but with the sail kit in place it passes as a small sailboat. Its a very interesting option, and if I were dink shopping today, I would take a long hard look at one of those.

[Sea Dreaming]

If a coracle isnt a suitable dink...
Maybe cruise in one?

Noah's Ark revealed as scaled-down replica built by hand in India | Daily Mail Online

[SteveSadler]

Hey Phizig
Looks like fun! I guess the outboard has to come off to sail it, be nice if they could live symbiotically, (wind dies half way around the island), that would be a nice rig. Bear in mind 3.5m is 12' not 9'. I have seen sail rigs that fit all dingys with leeboards. Worth a search.

[PhiSig1071]

Originally Posted by SteveSadler

Hey Phizig
Looks like fun! I guess the outboard has to come off to sail it, be nice if they could live symbiotically, (wind dies half way around the island), that would be a nice rig. Bear in mind 3.5m is 12' not 9'. I have seen sail rigs that fit all dingys with leeboards. Worth a search.

Yeah, I misread some numbers and put 3.5m instead of 2.75M, and by the time I noticed my mistake it was too late to edit my post. The DinghyGo is 2.75m/9ft.

I like redundancy, it would be nice to have three options for dinghy "power", motor, sail and row. I wonder if there are any outboard options (propane? Electric?) that are small and light enough to be carried with you when you went sailing? Or light enough to stow if you went ashore and they died and you needed to sail back to your boat?

The universal sail kits for dinghy's are interesting, but I wonder about the effectiveness of leeboards? I feel like a dagger board is better, but I can't qualify that statement with experience. The only advantages of the kits that I can see is that it looks like you can furl the sail (I don't think you can on the DinghyGo) and they can be retrofitted to a dink you already own. But you could probably sell a used dink and buy a DinghyGo, and your out if pocket expense would probably be the same as the cost of the sail kit (and then you'd have a brand new dink, instead of just new sails). Plus the universal kits seem like more work to install than the DinghyGo, the framework for the leeboards looks like a pain, and it looks like you would have to remove it to swim or dive off the dink.

Walker Bay now has a 10ft hard dink with an inflation ring, and optional sailing kit, the ring might add enough stability to swim off of it. OCTender makes interesting looking temders, but no sail kits yet. If F-RIB made a sail kit for their smaller dinks I would probably prefer that to the DinghyGo because of the hard floor (I have dogs), but right now it's only offered on their largest, and its a weird layout. There are a LOT of options, but all of them are a compromise of some kind, its just a question of what compromises you're willing to make.

As you can probably tell I've done a LOT of looking at the sailing dinghy market.

[SteveSadler]

Phisig
Yes theres a lot out there. The most common tender I see is a 8-10' hard transom inflatable. Hard floors are easy to come by, ribs are also common, but don't rollup and stow. Oars are a must when past swimming range of your boat. I,ve always used gas outboards as I tend to go long distances often, but electric trolling motors are sufficient for sort hops to shore.
Efficiency of the sailing rig seems a minor detail, as the difference between sailing 3.5kts and 4kts matters little. Being able to roll up the sail as you get to shore or dropping it quickly matters a lot. Ditto with keeping the engine on it while sailing. Most cruisers have a dedicated dink, and separate toy such as
an inflatable sup, inflatable windsurfer, pink flamingo pool toy, something that stows easily. I did see a hand cranked propellor in Corsica that would work as well as an electric motor. You may want a bigger boat or multihull if bigger toys are important.