Regarding real world dinghy reviews...

 Applying logic to an illogical situation, follow the money, and in the "Money vs science" department...

Voile Magazine has an excellent test of dinghies you might want to check out. It's the sort of review which I'd love to see in a USA publication and it got me thinking.

One of the things that gets up my nose where designers of dinghies are concerned is that if they have a photo of their design in use it shows just one person rowing on a dead flat and apparently windless body of water.

The picture I want to see is someone rowing to weather with at least another person aboard, a couple of five-gallon Jerry jugs of water, and a full load of groceries. You know, just a normal cruising dinghy situation.

Well, I can dream can't I?

Listening to Madi Diaz

So it goes...

Yet another dinghy dilemma...

About that debt crisis, something interesting from a young Kurt Vonnegut, and a really good post on why rollup dinghies make a lot of sense...

Speaking of rollup dinghies, we've been considering shelling out for a new inflatable for a while now. The problem is that we're just that little bit leery because the last three dinghies of the inflatable variety really sucked.

It's not like we skimped and went with a cheap seats dinghy either but bought established brands (AB and Caribe) but it just seems that top quality these days is more about the price you pay rather than utility...

Want to know what's really frustrating? Having to pump up your expensive hypalon dinghy every time you use it while folks on cheaper PVC dinghies just hop in theirs and use them.

A couple days ago walking by the dinghy dock I noticed of the half-dozen inflatables tied to the dock, the only one that looked properly inflated was a PVC... This no longer seems to be an unusual experience but something approaching the norm.

So much for the whole you get what you pay for thang...

Anyway, West Marine has their cheap rollup, the RU3, on sale for the moment at a pretty unbeatable price so we may just bite the bullet and buy one. It's quite an improvement on the old model it replaces with bigger tubes and a much better UV resistant Heytex fabric. So, it is tempting.

Then again maybe we won't... I expect it will all depend on shipping.

Listening to Ryan Bingham

So it goes...

Box-vision and dinghy design...

As the quest for a new primary dinghy for "So It Goes" continues, I find that as "out of the box" as I pride myself being, I still suffer from "box-vision" more often than I care to admit...

For instance...

Part of my thinking process recognizes that the ubiquitous RIB that passes for a standard dinghy these days is a long way from being an optimum choice but still I find myself continuing to include a RIB in my thought process, simply because everyone else does.

RIB's have all of the disadvantages of a rigid dinghy, as well as all of the disadvantages of an inflatable dinghy and, in the matrix of the two types, keeps bloody few of either's advantages.

Face it, your basic RIB has some issues... RIBs are actually heavier and take up as much or more space than a hard dinghy, they are inefficient in terms of power use to the point that most are simply impossible to row, and should I mention that they are EXPENSIVE? I won't even bother to talk about various repair & upkeep issues, and the dreaded dinghy butt.

The more I look at the problems associated with RIBs the more I know that they are sorta/kinda the worst way to go...

The problem is that being the de facto standard, everyone assumes they are the right choice and that any other choice becomes a sort of heresy.

I noticed that someone is selling a used Hobie Mirage locally for $1600 (about $1000 off the new price) and when I saw the ad my first reaction was "It's expensive". Having thought about it for a while, it is actually a whole lot better deal than any of the RIBs or inflatables around so in bang-for-the-buck terms, the two-person kayak with the Mirage drives is actually something of a killer deal... So why the "It's expensive" vibe?

We don't see kayaks being a real boat but more of a "toy", so as a result don't see a "toy" being able to pull its weight in the workaday world that is the lot of the cruising dinghy.  Add in the fact that for us to see a kayak's potential we have to be able to look outside that box and admit that the best possible dinghy may not look exactly like what we think it should.

The Hobies are really a bad example, as they are just one avenue of many kayak designs that are out there... The kayak world is something of a hotbed of new ideas, niche markets and real competition which means you'll find your buying dollar goes a lot further than in the RIB world.

Outside of misconceptions about what a dinghy should look like, we have the very real issue of how in the hell do you store something nearly fifteen feet in length on a 34-foot boat? Which is why I'm not buying that Hobie for $1600...

So, I keep coming back to this conundrum and hoping that someone (a Boat Bits reader perhaps) will come up with some cunning plan regarding a more sensible dinghy/kayak that makes sense in a way we have all missed because most of us are too far inside the box to see outside of it.

Listening to Les Cris de Paris

So it goes...

A small and tidy package...

I've spent months researching various inflatable kayaks and so far most have come up short in one way or another. So far, when all is said and done, they all seem to take up just too much space in the cockpit locker to make them a better choice than a real tortured plywood sea kayak. Inflatables cease to have an advantage if you have to keep them stowed on deck.

This one by Innovahowever, looks promising...



I'm pretty sure I can find that kind of space!

The Sea Kayak alternative...

I've ranted in the past about how I am not overly happy with various dinghies of the inflatable variety... Expensive, heavy, bulky and wet seems to be the norm and you'd think that inflatable technology would have been a bit more advanced... Talk about the evolutionary state of fishing with clubs!

The big problem is most inflatable dinghies rely on brute force to get by with and the advent of cheap HP in the form of outboards pretty much froze the inflatable dinghy evolution in its tracks. After all why design a better more efficient dinghy when you can simply hang a 25HP motor on the transom... Who needs efficient?

I won't even begin to go into the dinghy butt equation...

It has always surprised me though that more cruisers have not adopted kayaks and canoes as an answer to the dinghy problem... Easy to paddle and with surprising load carrying ability both have serious appeal except for the size problem as having a fourteen foot kayak on deck is somewhat problematic. Of course, you do see a lot of the tupperware kayak variety which are a somewhat bastard child of the kayak/canoe form which mostly just sit on charter boats and succumb to UV as they don't paddle very well and are too heavy for most folks to want to mess with.

So why not an inflatable kayak? Why not indeed!

I have my eye on a few kayaks... I'll go further into one in a later post (the Hobie Mirage inflatable) but for the moment you might want to take a look at two more "normal" offerings...

The Aire Sea Tiger is an inflatable sea kayak that stows small and only weighs about sixty pounds but has a lot of capacity and unlike a lot of the sit on top tupperware boats can be easily paddled by a single paddler. Having a rudder of course makes it much easier for newbies to get the hang of paddling... Not cheap at around $2400 it starts looking a lot less expensive when you start comparing it to products from Avon and Caribe!

Cheaper and maybe more sailboat friendly is the inflatable sit on top kayak by Advanced Elements the StraitEdge 2 which is both a bit lighter and a lot less expensive while performing better than those tupperware logs. Price is around the $750ish mark.

The thing with either of these boats is they stow small enough to find a place in a cockpit locker out of the way and more importantly out of the sun when not needed, don't use fuel and in yacht terms actually quite inexpensive... What's not to like?

Dinghy Dilemma.... ongoing

The whole dinghy thing is some kind of frustrating and the sort of thing that keeps you up long into the night much like world peace and perpetual motion machines ( though to be honest I am pretty sure that world peace just may be easier to achieve than a dinghy that does it all....)

The much maligned ( deservedly) Caribe 9L just found another sharp object in an over crowded dinghy dock to commit seppuku on. Just a tiny prick but enough to make repair a needful thing. Of course the super expensive two part contact cement needed has again gone way past its shelf life so the repair requires yet another purchase ($35) which will work well but again not be usable in a couple of months when the next repair is needed ( maybe we have found a marine perpetual motion money maker?)

On the other hand Barton makes this super wonderful Clamseal for the what seems a reasonable cost of around $20! Its easy and positive and the one I put on last year is still leak free...So the big question is the choice between messy glue job that takes a few hours to do right or a two minute wonder cure that works and is a whole lot cheaper...DUH!



Installing is simple....A quick two inch slit with a sharp object....





Slide/cram the sucker in.....


Screw the two parts together...


Blow the sucker up and hey presto leak is gone with a total time for the on the water repair being less than two minutes!

This is something that should be in anyones dinghy kit and if you are a life raft toting sort of person I'd make sure you had a couple packed away in the ditch bag...

But back on the dinghy front I have pretty much given up on the nesting dinghy option as they just do not seem to make the cut and while there are some excellent designs out there I just don't feel that the added hassle in building is worth the added size of dinghy in a smaller space on deck. So it pretty much comes down to a hard dinghy and eight foot is about the limit my deck will take. The short list was pretty easy...Having cruised with a Bolger Tortoise on Loose Moose 1 & 2 we were really happy with it but now that we seem to have more stuff the Brick was quite enticing as was the Fast Brick concept. The other short list contender was Rubens Nymph ( also by Bolger) as I've lost track of how many normal Nymphs I have built over the years and it is one of Phil's great designs. The added foot of beam in the Rubens will make for a much more stable and capacious dinghy.

And the winner is...Bolger's Rubens Nymph which is covered in "Instant Boatbuilding with Dynamite Payson" Dynamite can sell you the plans.

Anyone want to buy a Suicidal Caribe 9L with a Mercury 15HP?