Here’s a great story that might make you think again about your dinghy. It can be much more than simply a means of getting ashore for provisions or dinner once you’ve dropped the hook after a long day of cruising. Instead, think of it as a vehicle for exploring places you’d never take your big boat, for poking around coves and inlets and shallows without worrying about getting stuck or running aground.
A good, fast dinghy, according to these three authors, opens up a sense of adventure; it gets you closer to the environment, not to mention, bears, whales and icebergs. They know what they’re talking about, and they have the pictures to prove it.
Sam Landsman, Laura Domela and Kevin Morris are organizers of the annual Slowboat Flotilla up the Inside Passage to Alaska. They also do a lot of cruising on their own – Landsman on his Nordic Tug 37, and Domela and Morris on their Nordic Tug 34. Both boats have 10-foot RIBs, which let them cover lots of ground, cruising in the 15 to 22-knot range. They keep the RIBs on transom-mounted davits so they can launch and retrieve them easily in just a few minutes.
See their take on the value of dinghies, below, as well as Domela’s great pictures; she’s a professional photographer in Portland. Read more:
http://slowboat.com/2017/12/slow-boat-fast-dinghy/
