Yacht sailing tender / dinghy

[ab1974 1]

Sure this has probably been covered before, but what does everyone use as a tender. Obviously there are pros and cons to a hard / traditional dinghy compared to a roll up inflatable and a RIB.

 

Although expensive I like the idea of the Walker Bay sailing dinghy (with inflatable collar). Possibly a jack of all trades but master of none, but the concept of being able to have something that rows well, has good stability and something that I can sail around the bay with the kids and leave them to it when they are old enough appeals. The inflatable collar also has the advantage of acting like a fender. Would also be stable enough to dive out of.

 

So two questions really:

 

- What do you use

- Anyone had any experience with the Walker Bay or used other sailing tenders

 

Thats 100 posts at last!

[John B 106]

Hi , my name is John , and I am a dinghyaholic.

 

We've had a great run out of Deltas. They're pretty big at 10 ft but a great sailing dinghy and fantastic family load carrier/ get to the boat 5 up with bags and chilly bin. Good for towing and at 10 ft you need to tow them everywhere( Which I have up and down the coast and never had an issue)

They're getting a bit old now but you can still find them on Trademe.

Townson 2.4.. lovely wee thing but really only a two up boat I reckon (maybe 3), and the price has gone through the roof since Des passed away. 2.7 is uncommon but a much better tender.

Dolphins? good lord they're ugly but they actually work pretty well as a tender. Their little 7ft faux clinker one is pretty enough but I've seen so many of those suckers floating swamped with a cap in the water beside them that I nearly die laughing each time I see one. I'm laughing now at the thought of 'Rob' and his pre wife swimming to the boarding ladder several weekends in a row.

As much as I despise roto moulded things, the walker bay does actually appear a pretty good shape to me.

[khayyam 77]

the walker bay ones do look nice, but you could get an old sailing dinghy for about a tenth of the price... in fact, we have a delta. row/sail/motor. done.

[Grinna 2]

When we bought our boat it had an 8ft Walker Bay dink with inflatable collar hanging off the davits. Its about probably about 6 years old now and the inflatable collar is more a deflatable collar these days (need to find the holes and put some patches on them) but the dink has been pretty good really.

 

The previous owner spent a bit of coin and got the sailing kit for it too .... 2 piece unstayed alloy mast, boom, sail, centreboard, rudder, mainsheet system and vang. It was all new in box when we took delivery and I must admit I haven't tried it out yet. I get the impression it won't be a real speed demon under sail. Might be a bit of fun though.

 

The dink rows pretty well, though the oars take up a lot of room inside the dink when you're not using them (too long to slip under the thwarts). The plastic hull seems pretty much indestructable ... yes it scratches, but dragging it over rocks etc doesn't seem to do any real damage. A 5hp outboard drives it at hull speed .... though I suspect that a 3 hp outboard would do the same most of the time. You'd need stupid amounts of power to make it plane though ... even with only one person in it.

 

I gather they're expensive to buy. Not sure I'd buy one new, but they're an OK sort of a dink and are pretty stable with the collar (as long as there's some air in it). My wife thinks its brilliant, I'm quite happy with it at this stage and it looks like it'll last us for quite a while yet.

[tuffyluffy 76]

When I was a young fella, we modified an old Optimist using half a sheet of 12mm ply and some rubber rubbing strip and it worked a treat. Sailed like an optimist, rowed well and was quite entertaining with an outboard and it was stable and small enough to for everything else

 

The Walker Bay dinghies look nice, but I’ve lost/had stolen/ wrecked to many dinghies to warrant spending that much money on a dingy.

 

Just a thought

[Guest]

At a sailing club in Bangkok on a lake, they have a bunch of walker bay dinghies.

 

I have sailed them, never rowed or motored them though.

 

They are rotomoulded, which is what they make rubbish bins from. Rotomoulding plastic is pretty soft, so the boat deflects noticeably when you stand in it under your feet; I believe maybe 50-80mm.

 

The sails it comes with are ok, but the foils are lousy.

 

It sails surprisingly ok for such a small boat, but a dinghy I grew up sailing on behind our keeler that my dad designed (Tara, I think it was about the same length something like 8 foot something) would run circles around the walker bay; the walker bay will never plane and in any sort of a sea is going to be continuously taking on water similar to an opti for anyone who weighs what i do (80kg) as it sails. By comparison Tara would plane up in 15+ knots, and I remember seeing my dad having it planing in maybe 18-20 knots.

 

probably rows ok and motors ok, despite the flexy hull (we have flexy carbon rigs, maybe this is the new trend in boat design).

 

It is a bit heavy for its size but not excessively so; can be treated like utter crap since its a cheapo rubbish bin material boat; hwoever if you have any sort of repair....look out! I have no idea how you repair rubbish bins, so I can only presume you ignore scratches etc, and for anything more serious you bin it.

 

Probably tows sort of ok.

 

For my pick, I think you could find a much better dinghy than this. Slightly longer wouldn't be a bad thing.

 

If you decide to build yourself, it will be cheaper in $ and expensive in time. I would be thinking to consider a pram of some sort that can sail, or maybe find someone who has knocked one up at some point; a lot of yards the apprentices build dinghies out of all the bits of scrap so they learn how to do it; but that was back in timber days, might be a lot different now.

 

I quite like the look of the GIS skiff; depending on what you sail might be a tad bigger than you need, but it will mean you go to say Kawau, you can rig up the dinghy, and sail it right up the shallow part of Bon Accord and explore around. The walker bay is just a bit much of a compromise.

[John B 106]

Thinking a bit further about towing, We've had the Delta for years as I said earlier , but also a nice little sabot praam. Now the sabot is a great little sailer( converted to free standing rig) and really nice rower. It was just great as the kids boat and still is. Problem is that little praams have a lot of rocker and deadrise to make them a nice rower/ sailer, and that makes them pigs to tow over about 4 knots. The Praam at 7 ft 6 has much more towing load than the 10 ft delta.

The really interesting thing is that I bought a 15 ft cedar strip boat ex the Unitec boatbuilding school a couple of years ago and that thing is almost feather weight to tow. Weighs the same as the delta but is often literally finger tip compared to say 30.. 35 pounds weight ( fish scale) off the sabot at say 6.5 to 7 knots.

[ab1974 1]

The little townson 2.4s are a nice looking little boat. Are the 2.7s similar shape but a foot longer?

 

How do they row? Anyone stuck an outboard (heaven forbid) on one?

[Guest]

I have a MAC 2.4 that is for use in Clyde Quay to get out to the Yacht on the mooring.

It is an absolute pig to row as it randomly turns side on to direction of travel and goes sideways just as happily as forwards.

It is super stable though and can handle 4 people.

It is absolutely impervious to knocks and scrapes once the patina of dings builds up.

It got loose once and spent a week banging around underneath the overseas terminal in Welly before retuning into Clyde Quay of it's own accord, so it truly battle scarred.

You repair holes to plastic dinks with the biggest soldering iron you can find and just push the plastic around like icing a cake.

No one who has ever rowed one would pinch it, and anyone who did pinch it would probably row it back with a note of condolence for it's performance.

So basically the best and the worst dinghy available at the same time.

 

I also have a Seabird 2.7 sailing dinghy that is sails pretty good, but doesn't have enough reserve bouyancy to be able to recover from a capsize and support the mast weight. i've added some large fenders to the Yacht that fit under the thwarts, but havn't ventured out since. They are available for about $500 or so on trademe, so are an option for a hard sailing tender once you get some more bouyancy into them.

[Noodles 0]

we have a 8ft walker bay. had it for years. put a 2hp mariner on it. goes well. easy to row. tried making a sail kit for it but that didn't work. put opti rig on it, went like stink. only problem i found was a bit unstable fishing off it and small in size.

[Marshy 30]

Rich Hulston from Doyle Rigging has an awesome dinghy mould i built with him back in apprentice days. Similar to the walker bay boats, but glass, with glass side seats etc, has mast that works with just main only and with a furling Jib. Would be about 10 feet long and takes two adults sailing ok, better with one, but planes of and is good fun. Rows awesome and tows well.

 

Worth a look... PM me if you need photos of contact details

[Guest]

I've got a 1.7mt odd semi-pram sort of tweaked Sabot style out of ply. Lite, tows like a dream and it hardly noticed, rows magnificently, can carry 4 and you can sail it. Was the prototype for the Pine harbour training fleet I'm told. Sails surprisingly quick, as yet unbeaten in any sailing ding racing. Can just do 5kts with a 2hp.

 

Also got inflatables but they are an arse to tow and knot as kid proof.

Also got plastic ones. Heavy and can get soft on real hot days.

 

Paid $600 bucks, complete with rig. Was sitting in bay back of Motohie one loverly evening and thought great evening for a tu-tu in a sailing ding. Brought it via cellph and trade me an hour later. One of the best buys I've done for a while.

 

What ever you do get something that you or the kids can sail. Moments of bliss can indeed be found on a nice evening bimbling around a bay with a few beers and doing stealth fly-bys of punters dining in cockpits. Just seems a waste to knot have that option really.

 

Hi , my name is John , and I am a dinghyaholic.

Is there a Support Group for that?

[John B 106]

Depends Knots, does " O no ,not another dinghy" sound supportive to you.

I had one of those pine harbour dinghies, came with my boat. I didn't actually like it at all and I sold it.

It was yellow, a feature which may have had something to do with it.

O yes, that was a great money making venture for me that dinghy. It had a few scratches on the chines where it'd been dragged up the beach at least 3 times. I carefully eyeballed the colour , consulted the two colour charts, and then bought a can of paint to touch it up. I shuddered at the thought of actually buying yella paint as I handed over my mastercard, but the job had to be done in order to acheive a maximum return. A little bit of light sanding and a nice wee patch or two and she'd look like new I thought.

Slight problem.. the colour charts were basically transposed as far as representing the actual colour,and the vivid yellow I bought did not match the lighter hue of the boat. I needed 'the other one' but well, the can was open yada yada.

I ended up sanding the whole damn boat back and laying on 3 coats of the new stuff.

[John B 106]

Weird, can't edit me post.

Anyway ,after an investment of $49.00 for the paintIdidn'twant and approximately 4000 hours of work and a bad case of buggered sinuses, I sold it on Trademe for 600 bucks.

[Kiteroa 8]

My old man has a Townson 2.4 It rows really well and sails pretty good also. Quite tippy though if you're used to inflatables! You can pick up a scruffy one with all the bits for about $1200, but a good one will set you back a bit more. the 2.7 is getting a bit heave though.The 2.4's are in demand these days.

[Grinna 2]

A plywood stitch and tape dinghy like the 8' Dixi Dinghy or the 10' Argie 10 from Dudley Dix look very interesting. The 10'er can be cut from 3 sheets of 6mm ply and ends up at about 29kg. Pretty looking dink that should row, motor and sail alright.

 

http://www.dixdesign.com/dinghies.htm

[John B 106]

Is there anyone even making glass dinghies here any more. I remember seeing someone bought the Delta moulds only a few years ago, renamed it and put a schmancy sail on it plus a pricetag of something in the vicinity of 10 grand. I don't think it was terribly successful.for some reason.

[Guest]

Weird, can't edit me post.

Anyway ,after an investment of $49.00 for the paintIdidn'twant and approximately 4000 hours of work and a bad case of buggered sinuses, I sold it on Trademe for 600 bucks.

You didn't paint it blue and live around the Orakei area, there abouts, did ya? Just seems a little coincidental don't ya think.

 

She is twitchy one up, which probably explains way it's quick, but get a few bods in and shes surprisingly stable... even if looking close to sinking, which is never has got close too. I have some mates keen as on one so I might knock up a few. With one small tweak to speed it up even more

[John B 106]

Naw, I painted it yella like a mt gay logo colour and I sold it to some people who wanted it for rowing on their lake. I kept the rig for the sabot and the stripper.

[Steve Pope 243]

I have a Walker bay 2.75 RID with the tubes, it rows well with one person, slows considerably with 2 crew, management generally sits in the bow and I sit aft pushing the oars (the boat sits much more evenly) rather that me using the centre seat and M/ment sitting aft with the bow in the air. Beware of PVC tubes though unless they have had covers made and fitted from new as it starts to get sunburnt just as the warantee expires. Hypalon tubes are available but put it in the price range of RIB's with alloy bums. Don't know who handles them now but Smart Marine used to. I have a mate with an 8 footer and he has a home made rig on it, he's happy with how it sails. The roto moulded hull is very hardy. a 2 hp outboard will move it easily.