dinghy, was: Annapolis boat show

[RichCarter]

I didn’t make the boat show, but I took advantage of the boat show price and bought a new dinghy at defender last week. They have a boat-show sale going on. I drove down to CT and picked up a new Achilles HB350-DX. Its a RIB. The old dinghy was also an Achilles and lasted 23 years. You can’t argue with success, so we’re sticking with the same brand. I finally talked the admiral into letting me get a replacement. We put a FREE sign on the old boat and put it out in front of the house. It lasted about an hour. Somebody will have fun with it. Its time to pass it along.

Boy these RIBs have come a long way in 20 years. They used to be a lot heavier than a standard boat. Now they are the same weight, approx 200 lbs for this model. The bow is a lot higher. I’m hoping for a dryer ride. The V-shape hull should make the boat easier to handle and it might be faster under power. It has a storage locker up in the bow for stuff like anchor, rhode, air pump, and flashlight. The boat is slightly shorter at just under 12 feet, but the interior space is bigger. This is partly due to a much wider beam, and the pontoons don’t extend as far back. The tubes are much bigger. You can’t roll it up and put it in a bag, but we never did that anyway. We put it on a small trailer and store it in the back yard upside down during the winter. The bottom is painted with bottom paint. It makes quite a sea-anchor when towed, but we pull it up on davits when cruising. I turn it around and lift the transom up out of the water with the davits, leaving the bow in the water. She tows pretty well this way. Most of the 400 lb weight is on the davits. The davits are custom made to hold this kind of weight.

Here’s the boat if anyone is intersted.
http://www.defender.com/product.jsp?path=-1|215570|339563&id=1128071

I’m not planning the seat in the above photo. Its too heavy. Uflex makes a smaller steering station.
http://www.go2marine.com/product.do?no=161805F

I’ll spend part of the winter fitting the dinghy out. I have a 30hp Yamaha motor that is only 3 years old. The old boat would plane with five adults. I might get this thing up on plane with six because of the hard bottom. I’ll be adding running lights like our old dinghy. This should all be trivial, but nobody makes proper running lights for an inflatable. I haven’t decided on instruments. We had a depthsounder and engine instruments in the old dinghy but I don’t think I need them. The depthsounder was installed to let me sound out potential anchorages with the dinghy. This didn’t work as well as I’d hoped. A small GPS would be nice, but someone would probably steal it.

Photos will follow when I’m done.

Rich
BlackSheep and LambChop

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