Issue 25 : Jul/Aug 2002
There is nothing more irritating than the thwack of a hard dinghy against your transom. Cursing, you stomp up on deck, give the painter a few extra feet of slack, and thrust the dinghy aft away from the boat. In the time it takes to return to your bunk and find the right page in your novel, the dinghy’s back and bashing away with a vengeance.
Chances are, you’re anchored in tidal waters, with wind against tide. Your boat has plenty of underwater surface area, so it streams (upwind) with the current, while your dinghy has proportionally greater windage and is trying its hardest to sail downwind.
There are several solutions. You can tie your errant tender alongside, if you’re willing to suffer the noise of gurgling water between the hulls and the dinghy or fender bobbling against the topsides in chop. You can stream the dinghy from your bow roller, although if the wind dies, you’ll be fending it off from the pulpit instead of the pushpit. Our favorite cure is a bucket on a lanyard (or a small cloth drogue if you have one) tied to the back of the dinghy with about 4 to 5 feet of scope. You may have to do a little fending when the tide slackens, but in the meantime your dinghy will stream astern like a good dinghy should.
The humble bucket has another use when it comes to controlling troublesome tenders of the inflatable variety. Inflatables are prone to flipping over on the end of their painters in gusty conditions. More often than not, the wind gets under the bow and lifts the front of the dinghy first. However if you pass the dinghy painter through the handle of a bucket filled with water before you stream your inflatable astern, you’ll greatly reduce the chance of a capsize. The bucket floats just forward of the dinghy, acting as a hefty weight when the wind tries to lift the bow.
Thank you to Sailrite Enterprises, Inc., for providing free access to back issues of Good Old Boat through intellectual property rights. Sailrite.com
