Ken, I suppose you are addressing your comment to me as I believe I was the only one to mention "thousands of miles" (actually it has been tens of thousands of miles...).
You seem to have the impression that we do not go offshore. Actually we use the ICW for only eight daylight runs (Jacksonville to Fernandina 1 day, and Moorhead to Norfolk, three days) in an entire normal season of 3,500 total miles, so the vast majority of our miles are offshore, with the dink in tow. As for "stormy", we are cautious in choosing our weather and so far, at least after we had our butts kicked early on for our novice lack of weather wisdom, we have been able to avoid stormy weather offshore most of the time. But even then, we have had occasional encounters with heavy local weather with front passages, etc. The fact that our dink is a RIB inflatable gives it great positive bouyancy, about 1800 lbs in the tubes, making it impossible to swamp. Even with the drain plug removed it only takes on about three inches of water over the deck. If it were to take on a large amount of water I am confident most would soon slosh out over the transom, but it never does. There is sometimes a gallon or three there when we arrive at our destination, but often it is quite dry. We tow it fairly close, perhaps 15 feet away, protected significantly by the big boat, with two lines from the dink to our stern corners. Our high poop, about 6' off the water, keeps the dink's bow up, an attitude that encourages any major water coming aboard to soon leave over the transom. Our faithful dink has not been lost or damaged from towing offshore in over 35K miles. Even so, I am not really that comfortable with towing and would like to have a way to stow the dink on deck, but at the present time I do not. The point is: even though we would prefer securely stowing our dink on deck when at sea, we have towed it offshore without incident for perhaps thirty thousand miles of coastal cruising. Norm S/V Bandersnatch Lying Julington Creek FL 30 07.72N 081 38.4W > [Original Message] > From: Ken James <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: <[email protected]> > Date: 3/7/2008 1:42:59 PM > Subject: Re: [Liveaboard] Winter sailing heat / low amp draw circulating fan > > But this guy wants to tow hies dingy some distance back with some gear > aboard in the open stormy ocean while under sail...very different > situation from what you successfully did for thousands of miles, and not > a good idea IMHO. Not if you like your dink anyway. Or the way your boat > goes to windward under sail either, if it is a smaller boat which his > is.-Ken > > _______________________________________________ > Liveaboard mailing list > [email protected] > To adjust your membership settings over the web http://www.liveaboardnow.org/mailman/listinfo/liveaboard > To subscribe send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > To unsubscribe send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] > The archives are at http://www.liveaboardnow.org/pipermail/liveaboard/ > > To search the archives http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] > > The Mailman Users Guide can be found here http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/mailman-member/index.html _______________________________________________ Liveaboard mailing list [email protected] To adjust your membership settings over the web http://www.liveaboardnow.org/mailman/listinfo/liveaboard To subscribe send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] The archives are at http://www.liveaboardnow.org/pipermail/liveaboard/ To search the archives http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] The Mailman Users Guide can be found here http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/mailman-member/index.html
