Hello,
My wife & I will hopefully be entering the trawler life soon. We have primarily been looking at boats in the 39 to 46 foot range, typically pilothouse and europa models. Our use would be ICW and Bahamas, with a livaboard aspect.
One thing that I can't seem to resolve, is dingy storage. Of course there have been lots of discussion on the topic, but would like some additional perspective.
The assumption is that we would frequently anchor out and make occassional trips to re-stock, explore. So for discussion, let's assume that we would have 100 dingy uses a year, with a 8-10 foot RIB and an 8 to 10 HP motor.
Although I like the Sea Wise type of davit system, and to some extent the Hide-A Davit system, I just don't like the notion of putting the dingy on the back like that, for the reasons of asthetics, boat name (although I know one can/should mark the bottom of the dingy), and in addition, it can inhibit swim platform use.
So I've been looking at boats with capacity for upper deck storage. But the notion of launching the dingy down the side of the boat concerns me, and I don't want to hinder the likelyhood of using the dingy. And for cost reasons, I don't think I'll end up with one of the nice, upper deck single "arm" systems.
So the likely scenario is that I end up with a manual or electric mast system for my dingy. Yet I don't want to completely rule out the "dingy on the back" approach, not having any experience.
Any advice would be welcome!
Thanks!
Wizard
My wife & I will hopefully be entering the trawler life soon. We have primarily been looking at boats in the 39 to 46 foot range, typically pilothouse and europa models. Our use would be ICW and Bahamas, with a livaboard aspect.
One thing that I can't seem to resolve, is dingy storage. Of course there have been lots of discussion on the topic, but would like some additional perspective.
The assumption is that we would frequently anchor out and make occassional trips to re-stock, explore. So for discussion, let's assume that we would have 100 dingy uses a year, with a 8-10 foot RIB and an 8 to 10 HP motor.
Although I like the Sea Wise type of davit system, and to some extent the Hide-A Davit system, I just don't like the notion of putting the dingy on the back like that, for the reasons of asthetics, boat name (although I know one can/should mark the bottom of the dingy), and in addition, it can inhibit swim platform use.
So I've been looking at boats with capacity for upper deck storage. But the notion of launching the dingy down the side of the boat concerns me, and I don't want to hinder the likelyhood of using the dingy. And for cost reasons, I don't think I'll end up with one of the nice, upper deck single "arm" systems.
So the likely scenario is that I end up with a manual or electric mast system for my dingy. Yet I don't want to completely rule out the "dingy on the back" approach, not having any experience.
Any advice would be welcome!
Thanks!
Wizard