I've been looking at my deck a lot and trying to sort out just how much room I had for the next dinghy with no small amount of banging head against my hard dodger in the process.
I do happen to have a very (shall I say it?) "cunning" plan for the next, next dinghy (a sorta/kinda proa) but for the moment I need something to replace the devil-spawned Caribe that, by its very existence, offends the natural balance...
As always when I find myself with a problematic nautical issue, I start leafing through the works of Phil Bolger who always seems to be able to shine a light on what is needful without any of the BS that is modern consumer yachting. Five minutes thumbing through "Boats With an Open Mind" and hey presto... No more problem!
Can you spell T-O-R-T-O-I-S-E?
Back when we built the first Loose Moose we also built one of Phil's Tortoise designs as a temporary boat till we could afford a "proper" inflatable or build something nicer. The thing is, the Tortoise worked out so well that we never did build another. When we had a Bateaux Mouche try to pass us under a bridge in Paris as we passed Notre Dame destroying our towed Tortoise in the process, we simply built another and that dinghy stayed with us when we built and moved on to Loose Moose 2. It was our dinghy throughout the Med, Africa and crossed with us to the Caribbean only to be lost in Tropical Storm Hortense not too far from the spot where we were to lose Loose Moose 2 a few years later in St Thomas...
So you see, we have some serious history with the Tortoise design...
At 6'5" long and with a beam just a kiss over a yard, it is surprisingly roomy, has space akin to our current excrementous Caribe rollup, rows well, and is light enough for one person to pick up and launch overboard unaided. Sort of makes sense...
The late and great "Dynamite" Payson tells you all you need to know about building one in his book "Build the New Instant Boats". That, along with a couple of sheets of plywood, some glue, glass, resin of choice, and a couple of days to put it together, is all it takes and voilà, you have a dinghy.
As it happens, William Atkin had a design long the same lines called the Tiny Ripple. Sort of a cool, dinghy lifeboat and, while the design is certainly worth considering, I think the Tortoise is the better of the two. That said, there are some details in the Tiny Ripple well worth borrowing when you build your Tortoise...
