Dinghies is a interesting subject. I think we are onto our third now. Gone from an inflatable one to a RIB and then to a rigid plastic one. The all inflatable was to woobly (inflatable deck as well) to get in and out of, the RIB was to big to get up and down and finally the rigid one is too small.
The major issue is that we don’t want the dinghy on the foredeck and we don’t want to tow it behind the boat, what to do? Well we have experimented with it for some time now, first we made a “net” that we mounted to the swim platform that would serve as a kind of a hinge, was hard to get it centered and if would like to move from one side to the other in rough seas. This technique we used for one season, then we concluded that we needed to find a better way.
We started to look for davits that you glue to the pontoons, really don’t like that idea and you also need to get the dinghy up from the water, since the stern of Olivone is rather narrow (don’t want to dip the dinghy when the sailing incline is high).
Next idea was to manufacture a couple of arms and mount them on the swim platform with hooks on them so that you easily could snap the dinghy on and off and simply have a rope to get the dinghy up with (like a hinge). Then we needed a new dinghy that we could mount steel plates on, said and done, we got a Whaly 210 and manufactured a couple of steel plates with rings on them. The setup work really great but needs some fine tuning for this season (and maybe to get a little bit bigger rigid dinghy, like a Pioner 8).
Well we have experimented with it for some time now, first we made a “net” that we mounted to the swim platform that would serve as a kind of a hinge, was hard to get it centered and if would like to move from one side to the other in rough seas. This technique we used for one season, then we concluded that we needed to find a better way.
All in all it is a really smooth operation to just lower the dinghy into the water, fetch the Suzuki, mount it and then just unhook the dinghy from the arms. Vice versa when you going to get it up again, broad side to the arms, snap it on, remove the Suzuki, get up on Olivone and just drag it up by the rope. Easy to do and since everything is fixed the dinghy can’t move during sailing.
Anyone want to buy a couple of used dinghies?
DId replace hooks on the Waly to get it up another 10 cm from the water (risc of dipping the dinghy into water when the boat is heeling)
