Ahoy Ben, We tow the dinghy from its (beefed-up) bow u-bolt with two lines. One line is the dinghy regular painter with a another line attached with a sheet bend to make it longer, and the other line is a hefty hunk of double braid.
We attach each line to one of the corners of the big boat's transom in a V configuration where one would put stern dock lines. The two lines are about 12 feet from big boat to dink. The dink is so close that we can't see it from the helm, only its stern light about four feet off the water. The transom corners are about 6 feet off the water so the towing lines are leading up at a pretty good angle and the dink's motor weights about 130 lbs. Perhaps these two factors lift the bow and keep the dinghy's stern so deep that it acts as a drag. It is also in the prop wash pushing it away from the big boat too. The only mishap we have had was upon leaving Great Bridge Lock (south of Norfolk) southbound when a tow line got around one of the dinghy's air chamber stern tips and some damage occurred to the material attaching that air chamber to the top of the transom as the dink was dragged sideways. Do you mean the safety line is from each of Penelope's stern quarters to Ulysses, or from the Penelope's bow eye to Ulysses' stern quarters? Norm S/V Bandersnatch Lying Gloucester MA > Norm, how do you prevent your dinghy from running up on your stern? > "Ulysses" isn't big enough to stow "Penelope" aboard (yes, that's the > dinghy's name :), so I tow her by the bow eye but with a safety line to > each of the stern quarters, and she inevitably surfs down the waves and > slams into the stern if the lines are too short. It usually requires > right around 100' to prevent that, which doesn't bring me a whole lot of > joy - that's a bunch of line aft, and too near the prop for my taste. > >Ben _______________________________________________ Liveaboard mailing list [email protected] To adjust your membership settings over the web http://liveaboardonline.com/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.liveaboardonline.com/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
