MacGregorSailors.com

and useful information at the coroners inquest.

I have a few summers of towing my 8-6" baltik, up to about 14 kts....

forget the long tow rope, short ( I do mean short) tether is much easier on the dinghy and the mac. Do try to pull a bit from the transom, keep the nose of the boat about 5 ft aft, and it stays high enough to be out of the way. USe all 5 tether points and I havent seen any separation of the patches holding the rings yet.

I also have a 3.3 meter sea eagle that the tow patches have pulled off of. tying those lines to mulitple points is better.

however...... most of the time, for long trips.....if it goes....it rides on foredeck .

waternwaves wrote:.......forget the long tow rope, short ( I do mean short) tether is much easier on the dinghy and the mac. Do try to pull a bit from the transom,....

I agree 100%. Since we pull with it right up tight to the tow bar we never have any problems with towing. We just forget it and sometimes I wonder if we forget it too much and would hate to look back there and not see it .



If we are coming in to dock we will move it along side on the side opposite from where we are tying up if we have time and usually before we back out if that is what is required, but the tow bar does a pretty good job of keeping it from swinging around into the rudder or prop.

c ya,

Sum

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Terry,
Actually the boat is 32 lbs and with motor mount and extras 38 lbs.
I have had a A-Chilies 8.6 Hypalon and used it on my 35 ft. Alberg for around the World Cruise back in 1982.
Only sealant I found was 3-M 5200 for a patch, the patch kit is useless after 2 yrs or less.
I like PVC as a low cost Dink for coastal cruisers and easy to patch if one has a leak.
The Dink tows very well in light wind conditions and in a little heavier keep the stern plug in with a couple gals. water and tracks well.
$400 verses a $1100 dink for coastal cruiseing? You also roll this up to a nice small package in Bag.
I think most Mac. owners want a dink they can inflate and carry aboard so they can get to docks Anchored or on a Mooring Bouy and can easy bring aboard and Inflate/deflate with ease of handleing and low costs.

http://www.westmarine.com/webapp/wcs/st ... /0/0?N=377 710&Ne=0&Ntt=solstice&Ntk=Primary Search&Ntx=mode matchallpartial&Nao=0&Ns=0&keyword=solstice&isLTokenURL=true&storeNum=5005&subdeptNum=10&classNum=631
Dave

Terry wrote:I have a 9'9" Titan and it weighs 78 lbs, (I can't imagine how a 9'5"inflatable weighs 38 lbs) and I have a 60 lbs Honda 5Hp on the transom. When I tow under power it takes an extra 500 rpm to keep pace with another Mac (not towing) doing the same speed as me. I absolutely hate towing a dinghy and only do it when on extended overnight trips because it becomes a nice toy to zip around on when I get bored. My dinghy has an inflatable floor and keel so tracks well but still slows the boat down and causes it to steer to one side when tied to one side.
In hind sight I wish I had done two things differently, one - get a smaller 8'6" model and two - get it made of hypalon instead of PVC. I have only had my Titan for five years and it only gets exposed for a month or so in the summer, yet it has already become sticky and gluey from the suns' UV rays breaking it down. I even used 303 protectant to preseerve it but to no avail. I guess I should have made a cover for it to keep the sun off but I did not expect the short duration of each summer to damage it this soon. If you buy an inflatable, get hypalon and save yourself replacing it in a few years.
Having a dinghy to use at each destination is indispensable, you will enjoy it, but it will slow you down and you do have to be careful when manuevring around marinas.
One more point, you never tow a dinghy by the nose/bow handle, there are two d-rings on each side just aft of the bow that you tie a bridle to and tow from there, the bow handle can have a third safety line loosely attached with slack to keep the tension off in case the main bridle fails.

Summer,

I've often thought about using the ladder on my X which is very similar to yours for towing as well.

I want to go a step further however and adapt it to connect to the dinghy transom and then use it as the lifting point for a Dinghy Tow adaptation.

Check out the video

http://www.dinghy-tow.com/about.htm



Towing the dinghy with only the bow touching the water greatly reduces the drag and you get away from using all lines.

We still try to avoid towing if possible as we motor a fair bit and I don't like to tow it at above 10 knots.

Our dinghy is a 9'10" Maxon high pressure air floor model. With no hard floor it rolls easily and we store it on the bow whenever possible.
It's rated at 1100lbs capacity and easily takes all 5 of us in the family and the two dogs to the beach at the same time. Last year we even had 6 plus the dogs in it and still were floating plenty high.





If it's in the water and we don't have too far to go and are not in a hurry, we'll tow it. I use a water ski floating line connected to a standard dinghy towing bridle. The bridle is made of nylon webbing with a float at the towing ring in the middle and SS snap hooks at each webbing end that hook to the two towing rings on each side of the bow of the dinghy.

http://www.westmarine.com/webapp/wcs/st ... assNum=133

I adjust the length of the tow line so the dinghy is riding on the forward downslope of the wave made by our wake. It tows very well there and is stable and dry.

Towing the dinghy alone cuts just over 1/2 a knot off our speed. If the motor is on the dinghy transom this goes up to a 1-1/2 knot speed loss. Because of this we never tow with the motor on, it is instead stored on a trolling motor bracket on the starboard side of our transom.

You can see the dinghy motor on the bracket in this picture. The yellow float is the one on the towing bridle. I'm in the dinghy taking the picture. When not in use we keep the dinghy tied up to the port side of the boat and board via our Fender Step.

Only sealant I found was 3-M 5200 for a patch

5200 is a patch kit in a tube!!!!!

my mac dink is a baltik 8.5 and I have the real repair kit for that.(but it doesnt leak yet)

I was cleaning the mildew off of the hunter dink last summer, Trying to rind and correct all of the slow leaks and seam leaks. apparantly 5 to 1 water to bleach was too strong a solution for cleaning mildew out of the seams of the merc quicksilver 330 (11.5 ft) the adhesive on the seams separated.... and that boat at 11 years on deck was not in real good shape......

I thought about painting
I thought about regular repairs. coming to the general conclusion of repair over replacement while I am unemployed.
Out came the trusty 1/2 tube of 5200, I chased leaks for a week, inflating/deflating/inflating/deflating.....All those interior corner joints, corner tube seams, floor seams.......all airtight now..........and it is still fairly firm since last october.

sure its ugly, I was afraid to clean off the excess since it bonded so well...... but the dink was ugly before I put the 5200 on it. now I might even try to roll on some of that greay dinghy paint. or ge out the exacto to trim the excess

GOt at least another year out of it. Even used it to reattach the D ring points.

You won't have to lock it.

Sumner ... Your picture shows a towing bridle but do you ever connect that loop on your ladder to the dinghy dirctly to make it a hard towbar?

That would be a cool setup

on anchor, it would make a gangway to walk from transom
to dinghy too.

Duane Dunn, Allegro wrote:Summer,

I've often thought about using the ladder on my X which is very similar to yours for towing as well.

I want to go a step further however and adapt it to connect to the dinghy transom and then use it as the lifting point for a Dinghy Tow adaptation.

Check out the video

http://www.dinghy-tow.com/about.htm



Towing the dinghy with only the bow touching the water greatly reduces the drag and you get away from using all lines.

Duane: Do you know if anybody has fitted one of these to a Mac 26M? Any idea of the cost?

Kelly Hanson East wrote:Sumner ... Your picture shows a towing bridle but do you ever connect that loop on your ladder to the dinghy directly to make it a hard towbar?.........

I'm not real sure I understand the question. Are you asking if I had considered making some hard supports/arms that go from the end of the ladder down to the tow rings on the side of the dinghy?

As it it now the diagonal support bar.....



....that holds the ladder is removed at the......



......... upper end (just slides off the ladder rung). I then use the bar to pull the ladder up to me and un-clip the tow line from the carabiner and then lower the ladder back down horizontal to the water and put the bar back in place.

Now I can step down on the horizontal ladder that is like a platform and pull the dingy along side and step into it. I can also hold it there once in and Ruth can come down the top ladder and step on the horizontal one and into the dingy also.



Under way the tow line is pulled in so that the front of the bridal is right up against the end of the ladder.

Not sure any of that answered anything or not , if not here is a link to the build page and/or ask more questions.....

Tow Bar Build

.................,

Sum

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Thanks for all the great info guys! It never ceases to amaze me how great this website and its members are.

It seams like the consensus is that towing a tender will slow the MAC about 1 to 1.5 knots when sailing depending on the setup used. That's really not bad given I will only be using it when I overnight or go into the Chesapeake bay. Because I have never even been on an inflatable boat I have two more questions. If I'm just going from ship to shore, is it worth the $900+ for a motor or is it a must have item? Also, is it worth the extra $$ for the hypalon material?

SailingontheRiva wrote: Because I have never even been on an inflatable boat I have two more questions. If I'm just going from ship to shore, is it worth the $900+ for a motor or is it a must have item? Also, is it worth the extra $$ for the hypalon material?

We use ours every day on our trips and have only used the motor on a 3 day trip.....

http://purplesagetradingpost.com/sumner ... r-Mia.html

.....to Lake Powell with friends. On our other two long trips we didn't have the motor on. I feel you don't need it for some circumstances, but you have to be very careful if you aren't using one. On Lake Powell in high winds a couple times I could of very easily been blown a mile or more down the lake from the boat and wouldn't of been able to row back. You can't row against high winds. I was ok as long as the wind was blowing me towards shore and I could attach the shore line to tie the Mac up and then carabiner the bridal onto the Mac's shore line and go back to the boat attached at all times to the line to the Mac pulling myself hand over hand. Going to shore I had the shore line attached to the Mac and had it in the inflatable so that I couldn't be swept off down the lake. The bottom line is you don't want to be caught with only oars to use in high winds and not have a line to the shore or the boat.

Now where you are going might also have currents to contend with besides winds. I have a feeling we will have the outboard on most of the time in Florida for that reason. We haven't sailed there, but a friend that lives there and does told us to be careful that we didn't let the currents take us away from the Mac and not be able to row against them to get back. He said that has happened to people down there.

When we got our inflatable Ruth really wanted a hard floor model, but it is a pain to setup. We only have to do it once at the start of the trip, but still don't like that part of setup. If we get another one we will try out one with an air floor in it. Ours is a 9 foot....



...Zodiac Zoom and we bought it used (couple years old in good shape for $600) and are overall very happy with it and would spend the money on a higher end inflatable again, but as I mentioned we used it almost every day we were out last year (45 days). If we used it less and/or had it deflated most of the time I'd go with something else probably.

One last thing on the motor and don't know if this would be an option on an X or not, but we look at the dinghy motor as a safety issue for the Mac. We bought a used 5 HP Nissan long shaft and I modified the transom....



http://purplesagetradingpost.com/sumner ... iac-3.html

...on the dingy to work with it. Now we have a spare motor that will work on the Mac if the main one doesn't. This happened on the first trip. On Lake Powell you can be 50 miles or more from a Marina/road or anything and even though you can sail to have a motor failure there is not good.

Good luck,

Sum

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Rowing inflatables is harder than you might think. A cheap one will bend and distort, robbing your rowing energy and making you tired faster.

If you are more than 1/4 mile from shore, my guess is you will want a small motor at least.

We often never end up taking our dinghy motor off the bracket on cruises. Our's rows well, even with 5 people in it, and there is certainly some pleasure in the art and peacefulness of rowing. If I get tired, I just sit one of my three boys down at the oars and let them do the work. That's what kids are for.

We have a 6 hp Yamaha which was originally bought as the main engine on our first boat, a Macgregor Venture 21. Since we had it, it became the dinghy motor and on a few occasions over the last 10 years it has been nice to open it up on a plane and zip around at 12+ knots as we make a long trip around an island or bay, but these times are few and far between. We choose to make these excursions because we can, it's really rare for us to be out of rowing distance from shore.

I'd suggest you wait until you have a year or two of experience in the area you are going to cruise to decide if you need the motor. If I was buying again, I don't think I would even buy a gas motor. I'd go electric.

I'm actually in the middle of a very interesting experiment, I now have two electric motors integrated into the rudders of "Allegro". We were out on the lake last week with the mast down, the Tohatsu 90 raised, and we cruised around for just over an hour under silent electric power. The efficiency of the design I created even in it's non-optimized state with off the shelf parts is quite amazing. As we used it last week we would get 60 Nautical miles per gallon in hybrid mode with the small gas generator in use. That gives "Allegro" a range of 1,440 Nautical miles on the 24 gallons of fuel we have on board. With our soon to be tested higher pitch custom feathering props I expect this to go even higher.

Check out my project info here, as I go from prototype to a production product I may be selling.
http://www.rudderprop.com