I've been thinking about yacht tenders recently, not that we need one with a couple of inflatables tucked away in the garage and the 8 foot D4 pram dinghy that I built nearly 20 years ago still in fine shape stored under a cover.
I know you can sail an inflatable but not sure why you would. Years age I bought a Tinker Tramp rig and fitted it to our D4 pram dinghy "Poppy", even sitting on the floor which was the only possible position and resulted in a very wet bum, it was horribly uncomfortable and no fun to sail.
On balance either of the 2.5M meter inflatables work pretty well with our 3.3HP and fold away for storage, if we were going cruising again I think a lightweight, 12 feet hard dinghy that can row, motor or possibly sail is about optimal and depending on deck space a nesting dinghy could be the way to go. Nice example here from Chris Morejohn
Marginal 7
13 hours ago
Just because you can put a sail on it, doesn’t mean you should!
ReplyDeleteMy brother-in-law has a little Snark sailboat. A cheap foam hull, quite rounded and this tippy. The mast and sail spars felt like tiny aluminum poles that you could snap over your knee if you got angry enough. Small sail area. Maybe good to dump a kid in for an hour but a horrible experience for any adult.