[Public-List] Nesting Dinghy

[Gordon Laco]

That’s about the nicest nesting dinghy I’ve ever seen.

I’ve had some pretty horrible dinghies over the years… We haven’t found the perfect one yet, but I’m building one this winter and may finally had ‘it’.

When I bought TOUCH WOOD, my wooden Folkboat, I discovered afterward that I needed a dinghy to get out to her on her mooring.  I literally didn’t have a cent after buying her, so accepted the gift of a dinghy that was being thrown out.  That first dinghy was a death trap.  It was made of the bow and stern of the tooling for making Flipper racing dinghies… they are a 14’ class intended to be a step up to the Fireball class. Picture a Laser with a round scow bow.  The middle several feet had been cut out and the ends roughly glassed together again.  It had a flange around it like a blade, and because of the angle of the cut which removed the centre section, the highest of the very low freeboard was amidships with the shear sloping away to the bow and stern.  There was no deck of course, because this dinghy was the ruin of the mold from which the boats had been made.

There were no thwarts; rowing was impossible because the boat was so flat.  It was like a wide flat dish with the rough shape of a boat.  I ‘paddled’ it with a broken hockey stick and a worn kitchen broom, both recovered from the club’s firewood pile.  If I got it going too fast, as happened later when I had a paddle, the bow wave came over and in.    It was also very heavy, so stopping it wasn’t easy once it got going, particularly with improvised paddles.   

I replaced it with a cast-off very cheap beach toy style inflatable boat which had a air leaks.  I’d pump it up and dash out to the boat… the thing was getting damned soft by the time we got out, and after sailing when we came back to our mooring it was flat and had to be pumped up again.  

I should add that the disposal of the first dinghy was prolonged.  It was much too heavy to drag away and besides, still living at my parents house I had nowhere to put it, so I decided to sink it.  The first sink was in water too shallow and someone saw it and ‘rescued it’.  Imagine my horror when I returned to the club and found it drawn up on the beach by the club’s dock.   The second sink was in deeper water; that one took and I’ve not seen it again since then.   Sinking it was very easy, it was just a matter of holding the bow under water for a shockingly short time and away it went.

I built the next dinghy.  Still being broke I used the cheapest plywood I could find.  That dinghy had a nice shear and an ingenious longitudinal seat which allowed me to slide forward when a second person was in the stern.  Unfortunately I never got to putting a seat in the stern so that person had to crouch nervously while we rowed out to the mooring or back.   That dinghy lasted two seasons.  At the end of the first season it was the one I accidentally shot with my flare pistol one night… that’s another story.  And I suppose I shouldn’t claim a second season because it went out of service twice in that one…the first time was in May.  

My new girlfriend and a buddy and I decided to go sailing one day.  I ferried Caroline out first (she married me later despite all this) then went back for Dave.  On that first trip I’d noticed the dinghy was leaking more than usual.  Dave piled in back at the jetty.  We were on our way back out, paddling because I’d not organized oar locks again after the first set had torn out.   I was in the bow and Dave was behind me.  I heard him say ‘Ah, there’s a lot of water in here…’  I looked back and saw that we were indeed sinking.  I said ‘we’re going back!’ which was the right decision, but at that moment the transom came off and down we went.  Actually not really ‘down’.  I had the sensation of standing up on my feet as the dinghy went down, but my head did not rise.   We had no life jackets on of course and the ones in the dinghy floated away immediately.  Dave had a Mustang Floater coat on; but all that was keeping me afloat was the air in my foul weather gear, which I could feel rushing out around my neck.  Luckily we didn’t have to swim for long, someone had seen us and rescue was quick.

Once it was dry, I replaced the transom, rather I put the old transom back on, and slathered the joint with resin and some cloth.  Later that season it was the dinghy my friend Boyd was in when I purposely ran him over in a prolonged hunt which I thought was hilarious.  The dinghy was unsalvageable after that.   It’s finest moment was on one very quiet night it carried four men almost all the way back to the jetty from my boat.  It had literally inches of freeboard and everyone was very quiet as we paddled along in the dark across the glassy water.  I was amidships with a friend beside me, Boyd was in the stern, Frank was on the bow with his knees up under his chin.  We got to about five feet from the wharf when Frank panicked.  We didn’t know his terror of the black water had been building… but with the dock drawing near he couldn’t stand it any longer and he made a jump for it.  He made it to the dock and is still called ‘Leaping Frank’ thirty years later.   The panic spread… Chris and I also jumped from amidships, we made it too, but that was easy because we were right alongside the dock by then.  That left Boyd sitting on the top edge of the transom.  Of course the bow of the dinghy flipped up and it rapidly sank stern first, with him still aboard.

The following winter I build another boat, which was strong, but I didn’t like the look of it.  My fortunes were up by then so I bought a lovely wood and epoxy strip planked dinghy from Tender Craft and donated the second home built one to the club for a new member.  That didn’t last long though.  The next season we had a bit of a crime wave and it was determined the thieves had used people’s dinghies to get out to the moorings.  The order to lock up dinghies was reinforced with increased penalties.  Right after that, our club’s commodore arrived on a friday night and what did he find but a half dozen dinghies drawn up on the beach upside down… none of them locked.  He got the axe from the wood shed of the club and knocked a hole in the bottom of each of them.  Saturday morning he learned that the dinghies, mine included, had been put there in preparation by the committee running that day’s gala fund raising auction. 

I had the Tender Craft dinghy for years; I sold it and often wish I’d kept it.  But it was too small for us when we started having kids.  

So the next dinghy was larger… it was a Boston Whaler Squall… a sea-going tender Boston Whaler used to make specifically for towing behind sailing yachts.  It was of course self bailing, had an integral centreboard, and great sailing rig.  I could stand on it’s thwart and it wouldn’t flip.  Ten feet long, it was big enough for the four of us in complete safety.  But fifteen years later it was getting very heavy.  Finally one year when putting it away we discovered that six men could barely lift it.  The foam was sodden.  I’d tried drying it out by various means I’d seen online but you can’t really succeed doing that.  Boston Whaler’s customer service fellow wrote to me ‘our foam does not absorb water’… so when I cut the dinghy open and started gouging out the foam, I was able to send him a photo of my hand squeezing water from the foam as if I was holding the innards of a watermelon.  That dinghy had another several years service with the foam hollowed out and the bottom skin back in place, supported by wooden ribs.  I still have that dinghy but it is still bigger and heavier than I need.

The current dinghy is a lovely lapstrake pram built in 1967 by the renowned boat builder Hans Gerstman as tender for one of the Folkboats he built.  White cedar on oak, copper riveted, light as a feather, it’s great and tows like it’s not there… but it’s not really a lot of boat, being designed for only one adult.  With two of us aboard and me on the forward thwart, it trims down by the bow.  I’ve commented to Caroline that she needs to put on about thirty pounds to trim us better, I won’t write her response.

So this winter I’m about to build a dinghy with expert help from a friend who is a fair craftsman.


Gordon Laco
426 Surprise





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