Dinghy Dreaming
Since my boat search had stalled, I moved on to finding a dinghy, which is admittedly a backwards, unconventional and even heretical way of thinking; putting the cart before the horse, you might say. I love the idea of a RIB with its hard-shell bottom and reassuring periphery of air flotation, but even the smallest RIB just isn’t practical on a vessel under 25 feet in length, due mainly to lack of storage space. I have an inflatable kayak that I happily paddle around Lake Washington and it deflates & collapses down to a manageable size to store belowdecks, but it wouldn’t last long when dragged over the rocky beaches we have here. My ideal dinghy would be a two-chamber inflatable kayak with just the very bottom of the hull made of fiberglass; the safety of air buoyancy and the durability of a hard-shell where it matters. I couldn’t find such a beast for sale, so I set about wondering how to modify my existing kayak. This is a fairly cheap but well-designed kayak m...