Almost lost the dinghy

[jssailem]

Not sure which would smell worst...

• Dead cooking mackerel

or

• Venice Beach in the middle of summer

 

[heritage]

I pull the bow of the dinghy out of the water and tie it off securely to the stern pulpit. Only a couple of feet of the aft end of the dinghy left in the water. Our West Marine dinghy is very light and with the motor removed it rides behind the boat almost like it is permanent appendage. The bow of the dinghy is squared and fits nicely against the stern ladder.

 

[All U Get]

I added a length of shock cord alongside a few feet of my dinghy painter; maybe about 6' of shock cord parallel to 4' of painter. Whipped to the painter every 6" or so into roughly equal-sized loops (a nice evening project while watching a movie with the kids). When towing, the shock cord stretches fully and the main painter takes the load, but it reduces the constant 'jerking' a lot. Hopefully that description makes sense. If not, I can dig around in the storage tubs and take a picture. The shock cord might degrade quickly in a sunny climate, but up here in the PNW, it's been fine for a couple seasons.

I do have some shock cord so I may try adding that to the painter.



My morning project. I just knotted the ends of 4 feet of shock cord and threaded it through the line.

 

[All U Get]

Since most anchorages are 5-15 miles apart we have opted for towing so we can save some energy pulling it up on the davits. Generally we are traveling at about 5 kts so not too much stress on the painter, but we are still looking for better ideas .

 

[Whatfiero1]

after a friend lost his very expensive hard dingy in the chesapeake, we mused , with some dark and stormies, over a dingy alert system. it would involve rigging a very thin wire between dinghy and mother ship. the wire would be connected to a 12v battery source and an audio alarm . if the dinghy broke loose, the wire would disconnect and an alarm would sound on the mother boat. we never did fulfll this design because it was easier to just go buy a stronger painter.

Use a electric trailer emergency break actuator cable that normally attach to bumper would be tied to dink

 

[LloydB]

found this alarm on google there are many others. Use fishing line to pull the pin. Get 2 and protect the dingy motor at anchor
Safety Technology PAL-1 130dB Alarm w/Door Alarm

 

[All U Get]

After adding the shock cords to the painter, there has been a notable decrease in the snapping of that line while we’re at anchor with 1-2 foot chop.