We took delivery of our dinghy on Friday. I have been almost as excited by the dinghy as by the big boat. Our old dinghy was fine, but with an electric motor and a cruising speed of 3 kts, it was mostly ship-to-shore. Our new dinghy is the 10.5 AB “Sport” package from Guyer Boatworks. It’s a hypalon tube with aluminum bottom and concealed bilge (there’s a floor over the bilge so it’s a flat bottom and the water doesn’t pool around your feet – unless it gets really full). It has a stainless framed folding seat and helm, a 20 hp, fuel-injected outboard, power start and trim, and integrated 6-gallon fuel tank. It also has a small garmin chartplotter and depth sounder. For all it’s capabilities, it’s very minimalist and only weighs around 400 lbs.
I took it out into the bay and with two adults aboard it got to 25kts. At cruising speed (12 kts?) I expect we’ll have a range of around 30 miles, making this a game-changer for exploring and running errands. This is the “slow boat, fast dinghy” strategy and I’m super excited to try it out.
We got it athwartship, which gives us more room to use the upper deck, though we will need to find a place to store the rails.
