Dinghy
I don’t think it gets the respect it deserves. It is a place of a lot of adventure and new experiences. We love to ram around in them. It is difficult many times to put things into perspective without much experience. Of all the years of road racing motorcycles and motocrossing them, crashing my hang glider, scuba diving, facing sharks and all the other mishaps over the years, some of the most dangerous times have been in my dinghies. I broke an oarlock off one night on my way back to the boat down at the keys. There was a strong current and a wind that could have swept me out into the gulf if I hadn’t paddled with the oar to get close enough to a mangrove to get ashore. I slept on the porch of a kind Florida Marine Patrol mans house that night because I couldn’t get back to my boat. I bought bronze oarlocks to replace the common cheap stuff. Another time, a speed boat flipped my dinghy over and the prop of my outboard hit my head, sent me to the hospital. On my way to work in St. John, in the VI, I saw bloody Charlie lying on a bench because he couldn’t get back to his boat. He spent the night saving himself. On a short ride back to his boat, he lost his balance and the dinghy. A full tank of gas kept it in a tight circle for a long time as the current swept it towards St. Thomas. After failed attempts to get back on his dinghy he had a long swim back ashore. We aren’t all so lucky, the fellow whose dinghy supported him long enough to drift over the shallow banks in the Bahamas with no drinking water didn’t make it. It was almost funny that the moral of the story about a guy writing about a dangerous situation he put himself in was to carry a VHF radio in his dinghy to call for help. He was trying to set another anchor at night after the wind had picked up in a rubber dinghy. What about seamanship? I asked Larry about his red bracelet at a boat party (the cut off switch), more horror stories from his personal experiences. The people who have been around awhile know versions of the repeated accidents. The Bahamas phenomena (standing in a dinghy) is a result of collective ignorance spreading. They don’t want to be splashed? I try to never tow a dinghy. Generally it is bad seamanship and it slows you down. There are many bridle and towing strategies that can be tried depending on sea conditions. A dink can be a problem even on a good day, a knife should be ready to cut it away. It should be able to drain the water that splashes in under way. I have owned many dinghies over the years, inflatable and hard. Both have their merits and most of the time both have been aboard. The sailing dinks are fun but the trunk usually leaks and don’t sail well. The inflatable requires more maintenance and almost always requires a motor. My favorite is a well rowing hard dink. I can set an anchor from it and be moving in it quickly when needed (no motor to fool with). Great silent exploring and exercise. I rowed in conditions once that my inflatable with motor attached flipped in a strong gust. An outboard has a relatively short life considering its expense. If it isn’t a first pull engine, get rid of it. If you are close enough to row, why have all that gear? An intercostal down to the keys and over to the Bahamas can hardly justify an inflatable unless you do a lot of diving. They are more valuable down in the Caribbean. The hard bottomed inflatable is the worst of both worlds. In the larger versions they are serviceable as intended. Unfortunately the idea didn’t scale down to yacht size. It requires a large motor to overcome the deep vee bottom and extra weight. Some have a double skinned bottom that collects water. Where do you store them? The larger motor is heavier to take on and off for passages and service. I find the new davit fad interesting. It is a convenient way to store a dinghy on a large boat but a bad idea and dangerous offshore on a sailboat. A traditional sailboat has less buoyancy at it’s ends and will hobby horse with the extra weight of davits and dinghy there. It is an easy way to get a dink out of the water at night at anchor. I keep a bag with anchor, light, life jacket and whistle. Always ship the oars and have a healthy imagination. A dinghy is not a toy and deserves serious consideration.