On Mon, 12 Feb 2007 18:13:42 -0600, KLC Lewis wrote:

In the past, I tended to agree with the old view that towing a dink behind
the mothership was "lubberly," and ill-advised. I still tend to think that
way when a hard dink is involved, but recently purchased a 9 foot Genesis
(Walker Bay) inflatable. With this monster sitting, inflated and assembled,
in our dining room last evening, it suddenly occurred to me how much like a
very large PFD this dinghy is, which has me reconsidering my standard MOB
routine.

No thoughts, but a couple Stories:

First, many single-handers will trail a floating line behind them in case
they fall overboard. One guy I knew was trailing iirc 100ft of line when
he fell in. Swimming as fast as he could, he JUST made it to the end of
the line. Now he tows 200 ft... (in open conditions, of course! In a
crowded waterway that line is guaranteed to foul in someone's prop...)

Second, I was running "chaseboat" for some canoeists paddling across the
Strait, and when changing crews we decided to use an inflatable: we'd
trail the inf. back to the canoe, they'd roll into it, we'd pull it up,
and they'd get into Far Cove. Worked OK until the wind came up... One
paddler swore her handprint was imbedded in the stern of Far Cove when she
was fending it off while trying to board, and the whole procedure was
abandoned when a gust of wind picked the dinghy up and dropped it
upside-down on top of the canoe. (we just didn't worry about scratched
gelcoat and got everybody off the canoe at that point)

And that was just 20-25knots in Georgia Strait!

druid