Dinghy Painter

When it comes to tying off your dinghy, most people will automatically tie it off at the stern of the yacht. I would like to propose a different place to tie it off. 

Instead of tying at the stern with a short painter, consider tying midship with a long painter. When you need to board the dinghy, the painter is already tied midship, making it easy to pull it up to the gate in the lifelines. When arriving back to the boat by dinghy, you can tie the long painter up as you arrive at the gate as well. All of a sudden, you don't have to go to the stern to reach your dinghy every time you come and go.

The last reason to tie up midship has to do with areas with strong winds and currents. If you tie up at the stern, all will be fine when the wind and tide are in the same direction. When you get wind over tide, the boat will point into the current but drift in the direction of the wind. This means that your dinghy that is tied to the stern will now be midship and smack into your hull for the next 6 hours.  

If you tie the dinghy up midship with a painter long enough to reach beyond the ends of the boat, your dinghy will always hang out (bow or stern) just past the end of the boat and never smack into the side of your hull. 

Airflow During Rainstorms

Hatches and portholes are wonderful for ventilating a yacht when it is nice outside, but these big holes will let rain into your yacht during a storm at anchor. 

When the rain comes, you will need to close your yacht up nice and tight to keep rain droplets from soaking your interior. When you do this, you then rely solely on the ventilation provided by your dorade vents. These cowls will draw air in and separate the rain out, giving you nice dry airflow when the boat is all closed up. 

The truth is, most yachts don't have enough dorade vents to supply the airflow needed for "comfort" when you are in the tropics. To remedy this issue, we have found a little trick. 

Flipping the dinghy over the hatch will serve as a way to keep rain out. The hatch opens up into the dinghy and air flows under the dinghy and into the open hatch. This is nowhere near the air flow of an unblocked hatch, but it is still much better than a hatch that is dogged down. 

A very important thing to do though is to make sure that your dinghy is tied down. An inflatable dinghy sitting on the deck is just asking for the wind to pick it up and send it flying! Be sure you tie it down well, and have the hull centered over the hatch so that the hatch can open into it.. 

If you have more than one hatch, and have more than one dinghy, then you are in business! We keep our hard dinghy over the salon hatch, and the inflatable dinghy over the forward hatch (when it's raining). This lets us keep the boat open and airy in a rain storm. 

Hard Being a Dinghy

When it comes to dinghies, most people automatically think of an inflatable boat. These are by far the most common type of dinghy you will encounter, and every dinghy dock you come to visit will be packed with them.

It was such a rare occasion that we tied up at this dinghy dock in Florida next to another hard dinghy. Here in the state of Florida, you have two dinghies; one registered in Maryland, the other in Australia; tied up next to each other.

Even more special is both of us tied up to the same cleat in the same way, a bowline through the cleat.  This method of tying up allows others to tie and untie from the cleat without disturbing your dock line.

It's quite the coincidence! 

Dinghy Hoist without Davits

Davits are a convenient attachment that will allow you to raise your dinghy out of the water behind your boat. They hang out over the stern like crane arms and allow you to pull the dinghy straight up. When you are ready to launch the dinghy, all you have to do is release the davit lines and lower the dinghy back in.

Davits are convenient but they suffer two major flaws. Their first flaw is that the dinghy now is hanging behind your boat right side up. If you are in a following sea, you risk a boarding wave filling the dinghy with water that will rapidly add a significant amount of weight to the back of your boat. This usually results in the davits being bent or ripped off the back of your boat as your dinghy plummets into the sea behind you. Now, you are dragging a drogue of your mangled davits and dinghy.

The second flaw with davits is they are expensive. Cheap davits are a few hundred dollars and are not worth the money. I purchased some very inexpensive Davits to raise my dinghy out of the water. The arms were too short so the dinghy kept hitting the transom on its way up; and the purchase system was so puny that I couldn't raise a simple 80 pound dinghy. More expensive davits solve these issues by having much longer arms that hold the dinghy further from the boat to solve the transom clearance issues. They also have better purchase systems and sometimes, even a winch system to crank the dinghy right up. These better systems will not cost you hundreds, but instead, thousands of dollars!

So, you decided that you don't want to carry your dinghy like a bucket waiting to be filled with water behind your boat, and you also don't want to fork over thousands of dollars. What else can you do?

The answer is easy! All you need to do is store the dinghy on your deck. If you are coastal, you can keep the dinghy right side up. If you are offshore, simply flip the dinghy over to keep it from being filled with water by a boarding wave. Now, how do you get the dinghy onto your deck?

Your mast and boom are capable of serving more purposes than just holding your sails. They can also be used as your own oversized davit system. All you will need to do is add a length of rope to act as an outhaul. That's it!

In the dinghy, you just need three small lines that run to the two stern corners and one to the bow ring. These are standard on all dinghies and referred to as the lifting rings. The three lines are led to the halyards shackle, allowing you to pick the dinghy up from a single point. It is important to custom tie the lines so that the weight of the dinghy is balanced and the dinghy hangs level. Remember, most of the weight in a boat is located by the stern, so the bow line will be a bit long and the stern lines a bit short.

Now, the second thing you need to do is setup an outhaul system. An outhaul is merely a line that pulls something away from the center. The outhaul on your mainsail pulls the clew aft, and the outhaul on your hoist will pull the halyard aft. Having the outhaul attach to the end of the boom allows you to control the position of the dinghy with the boom.

Now, as you crank on the halyard, the dinghy will raise up. Then you can pull on the outhaul to scoot the dinghy aft. I have found it best to also raise your boom really high up by cranking on the topping lift before you start, as this gets the boom and sails out of the way of the dinghy as you raise it up.

As the dinghy climbs upwards, you can push the dinghy down the boom and pull in on the outhaul. This will cause the outhaul to pull the halyard aft and scoot the dinghy along the boom.

Once the dinghy is up and out towards the end of the boom, you can push the boom over to swing the dinghy out over the water and clear of the boats deck. You might think that a forward guy would be needed to pull the boom outward, but the truth is, as the boom swings outward, the weight of the dinghy will cause the boat to heel in that direction. This then unbalances the system and causes the boom to swing out even further! Basically, it will swing out for you and stay there.

Once the dinghy is swung outward, you can then safely lower the dinghy into the water.

Recovering the dinghy is the exact opposite, and just as easy. This lets you easily and safely raise and lower your dinghy onto your deck without risking anyone's back or spending a lot of money. The only real cost to you will be an outhaul line, which ideally should be twice the length of your boom. This will allow you to lead the line from the dinghy, out to the end of the boom and back to the mast. You also need a shackle that will allow the halyard to fit through. You don't need to have a shackle, but it will reduce the resistance and chafe that the lines will endure.

Dinghy Dock Tie Up

When tying up to a dinghy dock, it is important to know that the line you use to tie up your dinghy will both hold your dinghy in place as well as be tied over and under other peoples bow lines.

When you tie up, you will be tying up to a cleat that is used by many many people; all holding a variety of dinghies up to the pier. Should your tying fail, your dinghy will drift away! This means that not only do you need to tie up well to secure your dinghy, but you risk the holding of your dinghy to the tying skills of others.

If you tie up to a popular cleat, anyone who was there before you will need to untie your line to be able to untie their line. Then, you hope that they tie your line back up in a proper manner. This is where you risk losing your dinghy!

Instead of tying a standard cleat hitch over the cleat and over all the lines of other boaters, why not tie a bowline through the cleat below everyone else? This will allow everyone to tie and untie their dinghies without ever affecting your knot.