I thought you might be interested in the dinks we have aboard. We have one small inflatable dink that is good for rowing and powering short distances with a little 3 HP Yamaha. On passages, Little Lady (the inflatable) lives in the forepeak but for local cruising she is either inflated or lives under the larger aluminum dink known as Beer Can. We have a small power inflator to bring her up to snuff quickly.
The larger dink is an all aluminum unsinkable affair made by Circa. So far three of the FPB 64’s have gone with this dink with modifications to suit their owners.
For ours, we chose a 30 HP Yamaha 2 stroke for power. Over the years we have had lots of outboards, but Yamaha has always been at the top of the list. Two strokes, while not as efficient as 4 strokes and a bit more smelly are much simpler affairs to maintain and more reliable in our opinion. 30 HP 2 strokes are no longer available in the US but are still big sellers out here. You could step up to a 40 HP, but we are content with the high 20’s mph that we get from the 30. We have had as many as 7 aboard which is too much for anything but short distances at idle, but she will easily plane with 5 aboard. Three or four is perfect.
The hull is a double bottom and that compartment is sealed for buoyancy. The large foam collar covered with a tough polymer also provides buoyancy and rub protection. There is no bilge or bilge pump – the cockpit is drained using socks off the stern.
On our dink we decided that we wanted seating in the stern so we had a platform built over the fuel tanks (2 – 6 gallon) which has 2 fold down seats. I prefer to run a dink standing up for visibility so we chose a center console design. On top of the center console is a grab bar and Garmin GPS depth sounder.
We are working on what we want to do forward of the console, but think we will ultimately bungy in a small cooler with a pad on top for seating, drinks and beach runs.
At the bow end, there is a set of lower lockers for storage and then an upper locker that houses a small Rocna anchor – a minature version of our big guy on Iron Lady. In addition to storage, the two levels provide a step of sorts to climb up. This brings us to the “granny bars”. Duel waist height bars on wither side of the foredeck provide excellent handholds for boarding and exiting the dink to the the swim platform behind Iron Lady. These bars serve and additional purpose as well, but more about that in a minute.
At the aft end of the dink is another large grab bar. We use this to ease boarding from the swim step. We also plan to add 2 rod holders on either side of this for trolling expeditions of the fishy sort.
The stiffening strakes along the inside of the hull provide excellent stowage for fishing rods, spear guns, paddles, and our kedge anchor for beaching.
The center console also provides a lot of storage in two compartments – one high in the front and one low in the back. The lower houses the battery and the upper has a battery disconnect switch.
In the upper compartment we also carry our dinghy emergency bag. It includes flares, droque, space blankets, a small tool kit, solar flashlight, and spare motor parts (plugs, impeller and prop) stored in a waterproof bag.
As a side note, you can also see one of our flopper stoppers to the left on the floor of the dink. When moving short distances that is where our flopper stoppers live. It saves time when it comes time to deploy them. On passage, they live in the forepeak lashed between the laterals.
When on passage, we will add our large overboard bag as well with lots of additional stuff. (EPIRB, water, energy bars, first aid kit, appropriate clothing, bigger flare kit, etc.)
As you may now suspect, we view the dink as our primary rescue craft. Our 6 man Switlik is a secondary in our opinion and will be dragged along with the dink.
This brings us to another feature – the red material you see rolled down on either side of the front is a dodger which goes over the two front grab bars and extends back over the grab bar on top of the console. In addition to being safety red for visibility, this cover also provides a dry area out of the weather and sun where two or three people can gather.
We have been most happy with Beer Can so far – she has served us well.
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