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From: Faure, Marin (no email)
Date: Wed Jun 01 2005 - 21:43:43 EDT
My wife and I watched in some surprise the behavior of the dinghies that
were tethered behind buoyed and anchored boats the other weekend during
our all-night windstorm of 30-plus knots sustained with at least one
gust measured at 60 knots. A lot of the boats involved were sailboats
with towed inflatables, but there were some powerboats too, which had
launched their dinghies and had them on the end of a line as they sat on
the mooring buoys or at anchor. As the wind gusts started hitting 40
knots and above, the inflatables tethered to the sterns of boats began
to flip over in the wind. Fortunately the wind and waves were coming
directly into the narrow bay, which meant all the oars, gas cans, and
equipment bags that were dumped out of the dinghies ended up on shore at
the head of the bay where their owners were able to retrieve them the
next morning. But it was rather remarkable how easily the inflatables
became airborne. They would flip upside down, and then a few gusts
later they would flip back upright. Some of the boaters just let them
do this, while others pulled their dinghies up onto the stern in a
sometimes futile attempt to get them to settle down.
This was an unforecast windstorm-- the forecast had been for 10-20 knot
winds that night, so most of the boaters in the bay were not
anticipating the winds and waves that materialized in a matter of a few
hours. Of the inflatables in the water the only one we saw that did not
flip was tethered to stern of a cruiser. I don't know the proper name
for this configuration, but it was a bit like a sportfisherman in that
it had a long, low main cabin with a raised helm station or pilothouse
at the aft end of the main cabin and then a short cockpit. We figured
the raised pilothouse aft help protect the dinghy off the stern from the
gusts.
A few boats had hardshell dinghies-- there were a couple of Livingstons,
what looked like a small Boston Whaler, and a no-name aluminum skiff.
While these dinghies sawed back and forth something fierce in the gusts
and waves they did not look like they were trying to flip. We took our
own Livingston aboard when the inflatables started becoming airborne, so
I have no idea how it would have faired. But the ones that were left in
the water were all upright in the morning except for the aluminum skiff
which took on so much water from the waves that it sunk as far as its
floatation would allow.
When we were trying to decide between an inflatable or a hardshell
dinghy after we acquired our boat, one of the objections we heard voiced
was that inflatables can blow away from you if you end up in the water
with it in an emergency situation in strong winds. This was not a
factor in our eventual decision to buy a hardshell, but this comment
came back to us as we watched the inflatables trying to fly away the
other night.
I'm not trying to bad-mouth inflatables at all-- they have a lot of
advantages. But they do have attributes that a boater needs to be aware
of. We certainly wouldn't have anticipated this willingness to go
airborne if we'd had one ourselves in this situation.
______________________________
C. Marin Faure
GB36-403 "La Perouse"
Bellingham, Washington
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