Towing a 10 foot dinghy on a 19 foot sailboat

[Zed]

I was wondering what people would say about the effect of towing a hard dinghy that is 1/2 the length of the sailboat that is towing it(walker bay 10 with an inflatable tube).

I got into a difficulty while moving from my trailer to my mooring 5 miles away, when the tide shifted to against me, and I became effectively becalmed, with a motor that was dead due to ethanol poisoning(it recovered with a heart cleaning and a stint).

Anyways it just occurred to me that the issues of the becalming and difficulty on a close reach with low air might have been made much heavily worse by towing the dinghy. Certainly my back up trolling motor(that I didn't have with me) that moves me along at about 2 knots might have been totally worthless running against the tide and pulling a dinghy too.

Thoughts?

 

[Jackdaw]

It adds HUGE hydrodynamic drag. I have to image than in breeze less than 4 knots you just stop.

We have a WB8 without tubes and I hate how it drag downs our 36.7. I can understand the need, but can't image the effect it would have on a small 20 foot boat.

 

[Zed]

It adds HUGE hydrodynamic drag. I have to image than in breeze less than 4 knots you just stop.

WOW! We had maybe a 5-6 knot wind at the most on the trip back. So towing the dinghy may have contributed hugely to our eventually having to be picked up by the Coast Guard.

Thanks.... Never having experienced towing one before, it seems dumb that it never occurred to me how much it would be causing a problem. I know that sailing characteristics on a port tack with the starboard tied dinghy were "odd", and at the time it never occurred to either us or the experienced sailor with us, that the dinghy might have been the cause.

 

[Stu Jackson]

There are dinghies that have less drag. Maurice Griffiths used to tow a dinghy around the Thames Estuary and up to Harwich for decades between the wars with no engine on his little ships & the Swatchways.

 

[Johnb]

It adds HUGE hydrodynamic drag..

Towing downwind is easy, sometimes fun, but forget it going upwind. It kills both speed and pointing.

 

[Zed]

Towing downwind is easy, sometimes fun, but forget it going upwind. It kills both speed and pointing.

Pointing is certainly true. When I was out today, I had no problem even pinching. It was so much better than it was with the dinghy I thought I was in a different boat.

 

[rgranger]

On a 19' sailboat.... maybe consider adding oar locks and securing a set of oars on deck. Forget the trolling motor.

I can see a lot of good uses for a set of oars on board.... double as a boat hook, to fend off etc.

Something to think on at the least.

r

 

[Zed]

On a 19' sailboat.... maybe consider adding oar locks and securing a set of oars on deck. Forget the trolling motor.

Maybe on a lake..... I'm in a bay, next to the ocean, with tides; I'd need a crew of oarsmen.

The current backup is a 55 lb. thrust trolling motor, a 1003 Torqeedo, and a honda 5 hp. Since I had the ethanol cleaned out of the Honda, switched to ethanol free and Blue Label Marine Stabil, I've run the engine idling for about 40 minutes, and run it pushing the sailboat out in the water at 1/3 power for an additional 20 minutes. Its run fine.

But with a boat that has a 6 inch draft with the dagger board up, and the launch retrieval place is a beach with a 15 x 60 foot concrete ramp, there is really no reason(I see now) to be towing a dinghy. And the other place has a dock, so the dinghy can be picked up to go out to the mooring.

 

[Ukeluthier]

I tow my 9'-2" E. B. Stokes "Conny" dinghy (a 30-year-old fiberglass replica of the tenders provided with the old Consolidated Express motor cruisers) behind my 19' Menger catboat fairly often when cruising on the Chesapeake with little significant loss of speed. It is a rowing/sailing dinghy with a round bottom that has amazingly little hydrodynamic drag.

Considering that I can row the dinghy easily at nearly the hull speed of the catboat -- and that a human being can only generate 1/4 horsepower or so -- it's not hard to see why towing that dinghy does not slow me down much.

 

[Zed]

Considering that I can row the dinghy easily at nearly the hull speed of the catboat -- and that a human being can only generate 1/4 horsepower or so -- it's not hard to see why towing that dinghy does not slow me down much.

Lucky you. Maybe that giant cat sail takes care of it for you. I cannot row a Walker bay dinghy at 5.5 knots in the swell of Frenchman's Bay.

I've sailed the Chessie when I was a youth 50 years ago. I was thinking that conditions would be the same up here in Maine east of Mount Desert Island in the Bay. They are not; they are way different. In fact everything from the very fickle wind(and continuous gusts at 5-10 knots above the steady wind) to the water temperatures, to hundreds of lobster buoys ready to catch your rudder or dagger board, to anything I can think of is more difficult to deal with.

 

[Ukeluthier]

Lucky you. Maybe that giant cat sail takes care of it for you. I cannot row a Walker bay dinghy at 5.5 knots in the swell of Frenchman's Bay.

I've sailed the Chessie when I was a youth 50 years ago. I was thinking that conditions would be the same up here in Maine east of Mount Desert Island in the Bay. They are not; they are way different. In fact everything from the very fickle wind(and continuous gusts at 5-10 knots above the steady wind) to the water temperatures, to hundreds of lobster buoys ready to catch your rudder or dagger board, to anything I can think of is more difficult to deal with.

My point was that the design of the dinghy hull has a lot to do with the practicability of towing a dinghy with a small sailboat.

Your memories of Chesapeake Bay sailing must be quite feeble if you don't think our winds are mighty fickle or that our crab pots don't outnumber your lobster pots.

 

[Zed]

My point was that the design of the dinghy hull has a lot to do with the practicability of towing a dinghy with a small sailboat.

Your memories of Chesapeake Bay sailing must be quite feeble if you don't think our winds are mighty fickle or that our crab pots don't outnumber your lobster pots.

Thanks for sharing.