Mr. Ed Kelly, Sir, you are a gentleman. -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ed Kelly Sent: Saturday, August 28, 2010 16:22 To: [email protected] Subject: SPAM-MED: Re: [Liveaboard] Boat Tender - an alternative tow
Thanks for the gift of your thoughts and experiences Ben. I respect them. I am not using the Dinghy-Tow now, and do not feel need to defend it.. Everything is a compromise in some respect. I have had two boats with heavy Davits, including my current one. My Dinghy-Tow was bought in 2004 and I first bought it after a lot of research and reading every internet reference to them and the reviews of about 30 folks that had them on both Monohulls and on Powerboats. The unit I got does not have any "TUBES". Mine has heavy SQUARE STAINLESS STOCK for Arms with an outside dimension of an inch or inch and an eighth. These arms only about 42 inches long and anchor to the stern, by stainless, & are used at an angle when hauling the dinghy. DInghy is anchored in place by the lifting block and tackle. It is secure as it has stainless steel mounting brackets mounted to backing plates on both the dinghy and the stern. NOTE: I was using the Davit to lift the dinghy stern and arms on Angel Louise and found it even better supported. To install them properly and derive the benefit of the product you have to have a minimum width of the dinghy stern and on space between the arms to the stern of your boat or they are being misapplied and may have the attributes some have reported. But installed on our two boats the dinghy rode fine in four trips up and down the ICW and offshore between Main & Florida and in the Atlantic and Caribbean. The setup was instrumental in un-grounding on five occasions. We would take off the engine from the Dinghy in passages (as I wanted the dinghy to have as few stresses on its stern as possible but we would leave it hooked up in normal use.) YMMV but I would prefer the DT over the Davits as a boarding wave can wash off out of a dinghy on the dinghy tow. Similar to the connections on some swim platforms of power boats where he dinghy is carried on its side. I have talked to Davit Manufacturers at boat shows they have told me their share of horrors on boats that had dinghies flooded on in the Davits. No davit is made to hold a boarding wave and if one hits a boat in a dinghy in Davits, the force of the heavy weight and angle can break stuff too. We originally took off the arms from the stern of Angel Louise as we were concerned when we got down to Martinique about natives that would steal dinghies that were not locked. Everyone in the Caribe lifts and locks their dinghy. We decided we needed to pull our dinghy on board each night and so (since we had a back deck that would hold our dinghy) we did that for the last year. We are currently thinking about remounting the arms on the dinghy tow brackets during our time before heading across the Atlantic in 9 months, as it is much faster to launch the dingy and easy to pull of any grounding. Again, that is just my model of Dinghy Tow and my installation and experience I am discussing. Thanks again for your thoughts. Ed & Sue Kelly aboard USSV Angel Louise DC Based SKYPE Phone # (202) 657-6357 please leave message for us You can see map and travel progress at http://tinyurl.com/EdandSue On Aug 27, 2010, at 10:08 PM, Ben Okopnik wrote: On Fri, Aug 27, 2010 at 09:04:06PM -0400, Ed Kelly wrote: > We liked our dinghy tow a lot. If you look at their web page at > www.dinghy-tow.com there is a lot of the physics explained. Ours was > used constantly for > 5 years without failure. > > We did install ours ourself and paid attention to the details. We > also put Boeshield on all parts in contact with salt water, and never > had any rust. > > Its still in great shape. We pulled our dinghy across some turbulent > seas and in storms with severe weather, without a complaint and only > compliments... That is why those who have used them are generally > proponents. But you can do as you want and thats the reason everyone > has their own boat. > > By the way, we had read a report of cruisers who had taken their > dinghy-tow to Europe and reported good luck in a serious north sea > storm. > The dinghy is kept almost as secure as it would be on deck, and way > more secure than it would be in davits. Ed, there are a lot of folks who like their Dinghy-Tow; fair enough, and I can understand that being told that something you've paid a lot of money for isn't perfect can really sting. But to claim that it's more secure than a good pair of davits isn't reasonable. Of course, if you're comparing it to a pair of cheap disposable davits of the sort I've seen here and there, you might have some point - but it doesn't compare to a well-made set, and never can. E.g., when I finally do get around to welding mine up, they'll be heavy-wall 2" stainless tubing welded through my stern rail in line with the stanchions where the rail crosses them - and when the dinghy is griped in against the pudding and has _zero_ movement to it, it's essentially an indestructible single unit. The D-T, by contrast, allows a very large amount of movement, and is made of skinny little tubes that'll collapse with any significant side loading. Now, I will admit that I'm just a humble certified welder - not a welding engineer - but if I was given the job of designing something that would carry up to 500 lbs of dinghy that was supposed to be pitching, yawing, sheering, lifting, and all the rest in the seas that can result in a storm, I would have used something a whole lot beefier than what the D-T offers. Somebody just _might_ get away with using one while sailing to Europe - stranger exceptions have been known to happen - but it certainly isn't something that's going to become regular practice. On the same level, I saw a video of a Gemini catamaran being taken across the pond by the owner of the company; at one point, he looks at the weather to windward, and says something like, "shit, we're all going to die." He'd been testing, improving, and sailing those boats for years, but there's nothing quite like the ocean for really putting the screws to what you think works - especially those cute gadgets that looked so fine in the calm, flat waters where you "tested" them originally. But, as always, that's just my $0.01 x 2. Your mileage may vary. -- OKOPNIK CONSULTING Custom Computing Solutions For Your Business Expert-led Training | Dynamic, vital websites | Custom programming 443-250-7895 http://okopnik.com _______________________________________________ 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 _______________________________________________ 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 _______________________________________________ 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
