Dinghy selection

[Maine Sail]

If you must buy a Walker Bay buy the 10 foot model. The Walker Bay 8 is NOT a safe tender in my opinion. I own a WB 8 and find it great for one person but with two, in any sort of chop, it's easily swamped. It's very difficult to balance and row the WB 8 with two people and nearly impossible with three. If you have kids DON'T buy a WB 8 this is a very unstable and poorly balanced craft for more than one adult two max. I leave mine on the beach in front of the house and it's been there now for six years, untouched, and is still in fine shape. They are durable but the 10 footer is far safer IMHO. I regularly use my AB 8VL RIB. This is a 95 pound 8.5 foot rib and it's very, very stable & safe for all conditions. Below is a picture of my old 9 foot Zodiac Cadet Fast Roller with five adults on board! I can barely fit two people in my Walker Bay 8 and the pictured Zodiac is only one foot longer! My AB 8VL is only .5 feet longer and we have had six on board the AB safely!!

[Mark Yashinsky]

have to thought about as well. If you do want one for those times when you have a load, when its too windy, when its too far, when a storm is about to hit, etc, there are going to be times you should pull the engine from the dink. How are you going to do that? If pure muscle power, that can determine how large of an engine (and dink) you get. Also figure consumable(fuel/oil) and maintenance items for the outboard and storage of them.
Be realistic about it and not heroic. What shape are you really going to be in, if you row? At the yacht club I belong to, I have witnessed a couple (members) in a 10'(or sub) inflatable, rowing out to their moored boat, directly into a breeze with a chop. He was rowing and she was bailing. It was a regatta weekend and I was running a tender out to the mooring field for the racers and after the couple turned down a tow, I was concerned enough that I kept a close eye on them, till they made it (a long time!!). Later on, she said (NOT HE) that it was rough and she was concerned about him rowing the distance.

[Paul Grecay]

Accoustic, you are right...the Walker Bay 8 is small...and two people is about the max but since I am almost always single handing, it is right for me. I would not agree that it is difficult to row....I think it is a breeze....and I often take the rudder and sail with me when I want to use it as a sailing tender. But for more than two, Yes, it is a problem

[Russell]

When cruising you have to keep in mind not just number of people, but that often your dink may be full to the brim with groceries or jerry cans as well. I am very familiar with the walker bay 8 and would never recommend it to anyone as a dinghy, especially if used in anchorages that can get rough (such as some in the bahamas) they are way way too unstable, even with the optional tubes (which I would consider manditory). I have a friend who last year was capsized by a powerboats wake in a walker bay 8. The 10 may be a bit better, but still I would recommend anyone going cruising and getting a hard dinghy to get a very stable one able to take a large load and handle less then ideal conditions. Ussually the only cruisers I see with sailing type dinghies also have an inflatable as well.

Now if your just doing weekend trips or the yearly 1 or 2 weeks trip, where your never hauling large amounts of groceries and supplies and tend to be in well protected bays then I would say a walker bay might be a very nice option.

For someone with a smaller cape dory who is doing any extended cruising, and doesnt have the space for a rigid bottom inflatible or a sufficently sized hard dink, I think the best option would be a inflatible with a wood or aluminum floor made up of slats, and an inflatible keel. They fold up small enough to lash on deck when needed, and would still tow reasonably well without risk of sinking and enough wieght to not worry about it being flipped in normal conditions.

[John Vigor]

As Longshot mentioned at the start of this thread, and as I mentioned in this forum many years ago, I have towed a sacrificial dinghy behind my CD27 for more than a decade.

It is not the smallest and cheapest, however. It is, in fact, a fiberglass 10-foot fishing skiff with a good high sheer at the bow and flat planing sections aft. Obviously, it's designed for an outboard motor, but it happens to row very well with some 6 1/2 foot oars I found at a thrift store, so I've never had to suffer the penalty of carrying an outboard and an explosive fuel source on my little boat.

It came free with another boat, sans gunwales and various other things. But I patched it up and swore I would cut it loose at the first sign of trouble in heavy seas. Strangely enough, it must have heard my threat because it has behaved itself impeccably ever since.

I have towed it many hundreds of miles, even in 30-knot following seas in the open Pacific on the west coast of Vancouver Island. It's true that it will surf down the face of breaking waves and speed toward the transom of my boat like a bullet, but I tried the old trick of fixing a 10-inch plastic funnel on the painter about 6 feet in front of the dinghy's bow.

The funnel normally faces forward and offers the least resistance while being towed, but in heavy following seas, when the dinghy overruns its painter, the funnel reverses and slows down the charging beast.

It is my habit to tow it on about 75 feet of painter, and I eventually discarded the funnel when I found that the painter itself would form a big loop that, being dragged through the water by the dinghy's bow, would do the same job as the funnel.

The dinghy is wonderful in port or at anchor. It is quite narrow and therefore unstable until you sit down, but it will carry three and their groceries with ease and easily does the task of taking out a heavy anchor and line in choppy anchorages. I cut a sculling notch in the transom and have spent many happy hours surprising fish and crabs as I approach silently along the edges of many lovely Pacific Northwest wilderness gunkholes.

It has built-in bouyancy compartments fore and aft but I am still perfectly prepared to cut it loose if it ever gives trouble under tow. I think Russell is right when he advocates a small inflatable dinghy with a high-pressure floor for a CD27 doing sea work. I can't imagine where you'd park a rigid dinghy on the deck of a CD27, but a small inflatable, rolled up, will fit nicely in the V-berth where the weight is needed. The penalty will be terrible rowing performance, or the hassle of carrying an outboard--although there has been at least one occasion when I wished I had an outboard.

My trusty Westerbeast's freshwater pump gave up the ghost one windless summer day, and I had to tow my CD27 to a Canadian marina by sculling the dinghy. It wasn't hard work, but it was very slow, and it rather amazed other occupants of the marina to see a Cape Dory being towed in by one man with one oar in one dinghy. My reward was a wonderful dinner aboard a friendly Canadian yacht that night, and a free tow the next day 15 miles along the coast to a place where there was a diesel mechanic.

Cheers,

John V.

[Mark Yashinsky]

<a href="http://www.users.cloud9.net/~yashinsk/i ... .JPG"><img width="540" src="http://www.users.cloud9.net/~yashinsk/i ... 8.JPG"></a>
Yes, I know I moved slightly while taking the picture (with no flash).

Ok, so its a bit over the top, and probably hard to tow, but what a statement you would make, when you arrive!

[Warren S]

The picnic basket is a touch of class.