What you look for in a dingy?
Scott,
You are going down a road (once again) that I have just travelled.
Three years ago when commissioning Flat Earth, a Nordhavn 50, I went
with the bigger and faster route. My main dinghy is center console
12' CARIBE RIB with a 40 HP four stroke engine. What a wonderful
boat: plenty of power and range. It will do 44 mph with just me in
the boat and handle significant seas. But alas, it won't do
EVERYTHING. No boat will. I am in Hawaii now and will be heading
south and then west next year. I find that there are a lot of places
here where there is no place to dock and I need a dinghy that I can
pull up on a beach clear of the surf and tide line. I can't do that
with the Caribe; it weighs 700 lbs with fuel. The other alternative
is to anchor out beyond the waves and swim or wade in, somewhat
inconvenient if you're going to a restaurant. Also, with 4' to 5'
seas or more, winching a even a three hundred pound boat off the boat
deck of an N40 becomes a little dicey.
I believe that Scott Strickland uses a small inflatable boat as a
"beach" dinghy in addition to his larger RIB and I noticed that Robby
and Delores mentioned having an inflatable roll up that they store
away. My solution is to use the Portabote as my beach dinghy. It
folds flat into a package 10' long, 2' wide and 4" deep and is stored
on my boat deck right under my main dinghy between the chocks. I
use an air cooled 2 HP Honda four stroke that only weighs 28 lbs.
The weight of the boat is less than 80 lbs so it is VERY easy to drag
up on the beach or launch by hand when the seas are too large to
launch the main dinghy. It costs less and weighs less and goes faster
than any comparable inflatable. I cruise it at 7 mph with just me in
the boat and the 2 HP engine. Because of its light weight, with a 5
HP engine, it could easily plane and get 15 mph with three people in
it. It has as much interior room as my 12' Caribe and is made of
some space age polymer material so I don't have to worry about rocks
or oyster shells damaging it. It won't sink, either when full of
water. If I hadn't already had the Caribe, the Portabote would bear
serious consideration as a primary dinghy in one of the larger sizes
with a bigger engine.
Phil Eslinger
Flat Earth N50
Ko Olina, Hawaii